Professor’s new book demonstrates how music training teaches life skills

“The Transposed Musician: Teaching Universal Skills to Improve Performance and Benefit Life” is a new book by Associate Professor of Piano Dylan Savage; it was released recently by GIA Publications Inc.

The work is a resource for music educators and their students, and it demonstrates that the same skills necessary for a successful life—problem-solving, patience, focus, collaboration, critical thinking, improvisation, creativity and communication—are necessary for the successful musician. The book provides a practical guide to teaching these skills in the music lesson setting and then shows how they can be transposed from music to life and back again.

Joseph Robinson, former principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic, in a review of “The Transposed Musician,” wrote “Twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato recommended music first in his ideal curriculum for potential leaders of Athens—before sport, mathematics and moral philosophy. None of his candidates, one may assume, aspired to become a professional musician. Nevertheless, throughout centuries, people have acknowledged that the study and practice of music generates collateral benefits essential to human fulfillment.” He added Savage “takes what has been implicit all along and makes it explicit.”

Acclaimed pianist Stephen Hough reviewed “The Transposed Musician” and wrote, “This book asks and explores fascinating questions about what it means to study music in a changing world. This book suggests ways in which we can break down doors, for students and teachers alike, and celebrate music as something life-affirming, in and out of the studio.”

Savage is a Bösendorfer concert artist, a Capstone Records recording artist and a winner of the Rome Festival Orchestra Competition. He is a co-author of the piano pedagogy book, “A Symposium for Pianists and Teachers: Strategies to Develop the Mind and Body for Optimal Performance,” (Heritage Music Press) and writer of many articles found in Clavier, Pianoforte and American Music Teacher magazines.