President’s Letter
March, 2016
I am excited to announce that Elizabeth Nelson has agreed to assume leadership as BAMTA President for the year 2016-17! I am so pleased to be handing over Presidential duties into her capable hands, and am confident we will all enjoy working with her! Please give her a hearty THANK YOU at our March 16th General Meeting!
Last month’s program was a great success, and I know all of us left with more compassion and patience for our more challenging students after Mimi Ward’s presentation, The Value of Music Study for Written and Spoken Language.
Come to the March program for a humorous and informative presentation this month by one of our own, Carol Wickham-Revier, on some of the good and not-so-good ideas she has tried in her years of teaching. (See below.)
Happy Spring to All,
Emily Miller
BAMTA President
BAMTA Program for March
Carol Wickham-Revier will present our March program. I can’t wait to hear this! Here is Carol’s bio:
Carol entered the University of Colorado College of Music in 1967 on a Regents Scholarship, graduated with degrees in piano performance and piano pedagogy in 1971 and 1976 respectively, and received her Nationally Certified Teacher of Music certification in 1972. In the 1970’s, she worked for a small publishing company in Boulder, Myklas Press, owned and operated by Mary Elizabeth Clark, former CSMTA president, and helped to found BAMTA’s first Achievement Day in the early ‘70’s which later became a state-wide event. She has served in every board position except secretary for BAMTA, has chaired or co-chaired most of its major events more than once (Ach. Day 4 times, MPF 9 times, Spring Recitals, a 3-day “Baroque Festival” back in the ‘70’s) and also filled the position of Vice President for Teacher Enrichment at the state level sometime in the 1980’s. In the late ‘70’s through the early ‘90’s, she was a member of a four-hand piano team which frequently performed recitals of duet and solo piano music throughout Colorado, and in 1984, while working as marketing director of Chris Finger Pianos in Niwot, conceived of and co-chaired, together with former student, now colleague, Laura Williams Boniek, BAMTA’s first Multiple Piano Festival, an event which will be entering its 31st year this coming November.
Trained as a classical pianist, Carol enlarged her horizons by becoming a certified Kindermusik instructor in 1990 and taught Kindermusik classes as well as piano lessons in her independent piano studio from approx. 1993-2005. She experimented with a modified form of group teaching by seeing most of her school-age piano students in pairs from around 1980-2005, largely because of her exposure during graduate school to group teaching guru Guy Duckworth. She also studied jazz piano with Ted Alexander for 1 year, Keith MacDonald for one summer and, most recently, with Rebecca Martin from approx. 2005-2010.
Carol has attended at least 12 national and 26 state music teachers’ conferences in her 43 years of teaching, and is recently nearing completion of one of the biggest projects of her career, that of reading and evaluating, with the help of MANY of her students, former students, colleagues and friends, roughly 2000 piano duets, duos, trios and quartets, then selecting and “leveling” the approx. 600-700 which will be included in the 2016-2020 edition of the National Federation of Music Clubs bulletin. She was named Teacher of the Year by the Colorado State Music Teachers’ Association in 2014. Her presentation is entitled “Forty-ish Years of My Best and Worst Ideas in Teaching.
BAMTA Achievement Day
Registration Deadline is Saturday, April 9, 2016.
Achievement Day Teachers Packet is available online at www.bamta.org.
Thank you!
Susan Rudosky
Achievement Day Teachers Packet is available online at www.bamta.org.
Thank you!
Susan Rudosky
OUTSTANDING HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR AWARD
Submit your letter of recommendation and your student’s resume to Richard Capp by April 20, 2016 (revised date). Send by email (capprj@gmail.com), regular mail (3350 Loyola Ct., Boulder, 80305), or bring to the April 20 BAMTA meeting.
Creations Concert
The Creations Concert 2016 was a great success with original compositions of 50 students (ages 5-adult) being arranged and played by high profile jazz musicians, Sphere Ensemble (13 piece strings), Victor Mestas, piano and Sandra Wong, nykelharpa/violin at the Broomfield Auditorium on January 31st. Some songs were 4 measures long, others about 3 minutes long. In preparation for next years Concert (always the last Sunday in January) please notify students of the date, January 29, 2016 and the concert fee of 150$, which can be waived. Good news about the concert fee…… with the family’s participation in the SCRIP and/or King Sooper fund raising programs many families do not pay anything for the concert fee. By using the SCRIP program and/or the King Sooper cards (5% rebates) for weekly shopping throughout the year, this concert is doable for ALL families. Even if Grandmas and Grandpas/relatives/friends use the cards for their shopping it can be applied to any specific student’s concert fee. Thus ALL students can participate without regard for having to “pay” an outright concert fee, IF they purchase at least $450 worth of groceries from King Sooper, per month for 12 months, using the reloadable gift card. In addition, using the SCRIP gift card program another 500 stores give the Creations Concert a percentage of their sales, some stores like Macys, give as much as 10%. Remember to plan ahead and encourage ALL students to improvise and compose, giving the world a chance to hear the beautiful music inside of them. Please contact Maria Jyllian Hart for enrollment in the gift card programs and for details about the submission deadlines, etc. 720-838-8685 or higherground1234@gmail.com