Improvisation and transposition do not have to be extras. They can be woven into weekly lessons to build harmonic fluency, stylistic awareness, and creative confidence. Drawing on jazz pedagogy and 19th-century sources, this session shows how to teach vocabulary in all keys through practical exercises and preluding, with efficient transposition routines for multiple levels. A brief historical context will show how preluding functioned as a normal part of performance practice. Live, improvised examples and short model preludes will demonstrate accessible starting points for students. Attendees will leave with ready-to-use strategies, links to public-domain prelude collections, and handouts that make it simple to integrate preluding and transposition into lessons, practice, and performance.

Dr. Samuel Gingher, NCTM, currently serves as Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy at East Carolina University, with previous faculty positions at Northern Arizona University, Millikin University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bradley University. His current research interests include classical piano improvisation pedagogy and the discovery and performance of rare masterworks. Dr. Gingher’s world-premiere recordings of piano trios and four-hand piano fantasies by Carl Czerny are available on the Naxos label.

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Dr. Gingher has been the winner of several competitions and recipient of many awards, including the Krannert Debut Artist Award, first prize in Brevard Music Festival’s Solo Piano Competition, first prize in WVU’s Intersection between Jazz and Classical solo piano festival competition, the 21st Century Piano Commission Competition at UIUC, and concerto competition winner at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Concerto Competition in Georgia. He has performed and taught in piano and chamber music festivals in North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, California, Arizona, West Virginia, Austria and Switzerland, and has played in a variety of new music, chamber and jazz groups.

Dr. Gingher is an active member of MTNA and has served as a clinician and adjudicator for state conferences in Illinois, Arizona, New Mexico and North Carolina. For many years, he served as the DAMTA Piano Performance and Theory Chair for the ISMTA Achievement in Music Exams, and currently serves as the Piano Performance Festival Director for NCMTA.

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Dr. Gingher has additional experience as a composer, arranger and free-lance audio engineer, having served as producer or engineer for albums on the Naxos, Centaur, Albany, MSR Classics and Pacific Media labels. He holds a DMA in Piano Performance and Literature, MM in Piano Pedagogy, and MM in Piano Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and BM in Piano Performance from UNC-Chapel Hill. He has worked in masterclasses with Thomas Lymenstull, Ann Schein, Barry Snyder, Kirill Gerstein, Ian Hobson, Anton Kuerti, Wolfgang Watzinger and Nelita True. His former piano mentors include Timothy Ehlen, Thomas Otten, Edmund Paolantonio and Constance Kotis.