Yoko Hagino, Teaching her students to excel in performance

Inspired by watching her daughter skate, she laced up her skates and stepped out onto the rink. Gliding forward without falling was not enough. Typical for CCM piano faculty member Yoko Hagino, she set out to conquer hopping and spinning on ice, and even learning the spiral—not an easy feat for most adults. Her daughter’s coach saw that familiar gleam in her eyes and without much coaxing, Yoko signed up for ice skating lessons two years ago. “Branching out and learning to skate has been a great source for teaching beginners,” Yoko excitedly states.

She feels fortunate to have an extremely patient and positive skating coach. Even more now, Yoko understands the struggles of piano students and tries to use her skating stories to teach.
When asked about falling on ice, Yoko proudly announced that it doesn’t happen much at all because her coach taught her how to prevent falls, similar to how she prepares her students for their recital performances.

Yoko’s first instructor understood the importance of teaching performance skills
A businessman by day, Yoko’s dad found time to enjoy his love of music and sang in two prominent choirs in Japan. From the start, his mission was to find Yoko the right teacher—someone who shared his passion for music and performing. It made a world of difference to her.

Mastering performing

Her enthusiasm shines through when Yoko speaks about practicing and playing the piano. “Piano is the instrument that covers all the ranges of instruments—the piccolo, double bass, percussion, tuba, and on. You can express the whole orchestra with one instrument, the piano.”
As the co-director of Die Musiker Witz, a chamber music group in Japan, she has planned their summer performances for more than 20 years. Her teaching and performance schedule throughout the year keeps her busy: from one of CCM’s concerts—Music & Water this past March—to the Boston Modern Orchestra Project at Carnegie Hall, to the Monadnock Music Festival this summer, which will feature her favorite composer, Brahms.

Ensuring successful student performances

“Yes, I still get nervous,” Yoko says adamantly. After all these years of experience, even she feels the jitters before each performance. Sharing her performing feelings and stories with her students helps ease their nerves and apprehensions about their upcoming recitals.

A piece of performing advice she received years ago became her motto: Practice as you would perform, and then perform as you would practice. Yoko tries to get her students to imagine the sound of their performances—”play like you’d hear it in a concert hall—and hear and feel the energy.” To avoid racing heartbeats, Yoko teaches her students to “center themselves” and practice staying as calm as possible. Practicing mental awareness of the task at hand helps with fine-tuning performing pieces. No doubt occasional mistakes will be made during a recital, but she implores her students to continue playing through their pieces. “No one knows that piece better than you”, she tells them.

Yoko encourages her students to interject their personality when performing—rather than simply straightforward playing of a piece. She compared this to simply stacking Legos versus building a creative masterpiece. Yoko wants her students to experience freedom with music. She exclaims, “Music is an expressional art. You must feel the music.” When her students take to the stage this recital season, rest assured they’ll be well prepared.

Yoko Hagino consistently nails classical and contemporary pieces on the performance stage, and now in the skating rink (okay, we’re still waiting to hear about her perfected spiral), but if you’ve seen her perform, you’d understand thoroughly what we mean.

Plan a road trip to see Yoko perform at the Monadnock Music Festival
Rindge Village Concert, Sunday, June 25th at 4 pm at Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, NH (free and open to the public)

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