Teaching Demonstrations
Tradition and Transformation: Learning, Playing, and Teaching Outside the Box

Exceptional Teaching Demonstrations
Three teaching demonstrations will focus on what innovative and effective teachers can do to create extraordinary results with their students - beginners to advanced, young children to adults. We consider these demonstrations, both live and on videotape, the cornerstones of the Conference. In them you will observe exceptional teaching in action in a variety of ability levels, lesson formats, and settings.

photo Janet Johnson
The Piano Detectives Club: A New Approach to Group Piano for Young Children

Janet Hart Johnson created The Piano Detectives Club as a way to introduce young children to the piano. The program embraces the child's natural curiosity and need for learning through captivating hands-on experiences. Using video segments taped over the past year, this session previews her classroom structure, teaching techniques, and carefully designed materials.

Mrs. Johnson operates her studio, The Music Clubhouse, in Lawrence, Kansas. The Music Clubhouse enrolls over 200 students in piano and Kindermusik. Mrs. Johnson was formerly Assistant Professor of Music at Oklahoma Baptist University and is a graduate of Westminster Choir College where she studied piano pedagogy with Frances Clark and Louise Goss.

photo William Westney
The Interactive Piano Lesson

William Westney has developed fertile alternatives to traditional master classes. In this session he explores fresh possibilities for private lessons. The aim is to encourage students to trust their inner musical selves, using honest dialogue, expressive movement, and interactions with others as pathways to interpretive truthfulness.

Dr. Westney is Distinguished Professor and Artist-in-Residence at Texas Tech University. A prizewinning concert pianist and interdisciplinary lecturer, he has received many teaching awards, and his acclaimed Un-Master Class performance has been held on three continents. Westney's groundbreaking book The Perfect Wrong Note is now in its second printing.

photo Paul Wirth
Developing Artistic Command through Technical Mastery

Paul Wirth demonstrates the principles, practical application, and artistic results of his Gravity Based Technique in developing young artists.  With a new student, videotaped throughout the year, this session reveals a coalescent process; beginning with mastery of the body as a mechanism, following through with its most efficient manipulation of the instrument, and completing with the teaching of artistic principles.

Dr. Wirth, a former assistant to Sidney Foster at Indiana University, has been adapting advanced concepts to precollege aged students for 25 years. He is cofounder of the Central Minnesota Music School, the Salon se Leve concert series in St. Paul and the Young Artist Piano Camp in Duluth, MN.  His students have been featured soloists in over fifty concerts with orchestra, and numerously on NPR's "From the Top."