Teaching Beyond the Notes

Jaime Winston BA ’22, Marketing & Communications

Emma Peterson smiled to the Browning Center audience before sitting at the Steinway. She lifted her hands intently above the keys, took a deep breath… and then took everyone else’s away. Johannes Brahms’ Capriccio Op. 166 No. 7 filled the performance room with powerful, contrasting tempos, setting the stage for the WSU piano program’s fall 2023 jury recital.

Weber State’s piano students began performing a concert as their final each semester 18 years earlier, instead of only playing for teachers, explained Yu-Jane Yang, director of the program.

The recital means more than a grade for students. It’s a semester’s worth of practice.

“The day of juries, everyone’s just as nervous as they are excited,” Peterson said. “There is so much energy, and it’s so rewarding to not only perform yourself but watch all your peers perform the pieces that they worked on all semester.”

Peterson’s classmates followed up with works by Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin and others.

While the audience of about 50 included mostly teachers, family and friends, their applause at the end was more than just moral support. They saw an elite piano program at work.

Piano Powerhouse

Students in the piano program, officially titled Keyboard Studies, regularly win state, national and international competitions, and receive scholarships to the nation’s top graduate programs.

Regularly placing at the annual Utah Music Teachers Association (UMTA) state competition, WSU students received four of the six top honors in the state for piano at the university level in both 2015 and 2020.

Often, when a pianist has the credentials to go to any music school in the country, they pick WSU for its quality teaching, low tuition and scholarships, Yang said.

Scholarship donor Jeanne Hall BA ’69 echoes Yang’s point about quality teaching.

“I watch Dr. Yang as she teaches them, and she’s not just saying ‘You have to hit the right notes,’ she’s saying ‘Where is the magic in this?’” said Hall, cofounder of The Alan and Jeanne Hall Foundation.

Hall nominated Yang for her 2023 Governor’s Mansion Artist Award for performing arts. Yang has also been named Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor and Endowed Scholar/Artist of the College of Arts & Humanities at WSU, along with Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Teacher of the Year in 2020.

Growing up in Taiwan, she began playing piano at age 5 after seeing The Sound of Music.

“I was really intrigued by all those beautiful melodies, and I came home and tried to figure out all those tunes on my toy piano,” she recalled. “Eventually, I tried to play my kindergarten teacher’s piano, and the teacher told my mother, ‘Well, you might want to give her some lessons.’”

Yang moved to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, among the top five music schools in the country at the time. Her husband, Shi-Hwa Wang, became a Weber State violin professor while she completed her doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She joined him on the WSU faculty, teaching piano, in 1992.

About 15 years later, Yang became Keyboard Studies director. She succeeded Diana Page, who established Weber’s UMTA student chapter — once known as the Treblemakers and now the MTNA student chapter — as well as the annual WSU Piano Festival, which welcomes pianists in grades one to 12 to campus to perform.

The piano faculty also includes professor Esther JeeHae Ahn and adjunct instructors Sean Steiner and Cammie Titus BS ’98. Yang said it’s their goal to make sure students are competitive in graduate school or their careers. “I’m just so excited about getting students where they can be after being at WSU,” she said.

One way the faculty do so is through quality equipment. WSU is an all-Steinway school.

The company, founded in 19th century Germany, is known worldwide for handcrafted, quality instruments. Thanks to an initiative put forward by former WSU provost Michael Vaughan, all pianos Weber State students use on campus are made by Steinway. “It attracts not just students, but faculty,” Yang said. “They would think, ‘This school really values art and the quality of student education.’”

Of course, quality teaching and instruments only get students so far. Their dedication drives them.

Driven by Dedication

Fanya Lin BM ’13 turned down Juilliard to attend Weber State, and she has no regrets.

She began playing piano at age 4 in Taiwan. While both of her parents were rock musicians, she discovered a love for classical music through a music conservatory when she was 9.

She dreamed of going to The Juilliard School for her undergraduate degree until a master class with Yang put WSU on her radar. “I really enjoyed her style of teaching,” Lin said. “So, when I was applying for my undergrad, I applied to Juilliard, Oberlin and Weber State.”

Lin was accepted to all three. She chose WSU to study with Yang, who taught her to play mindfully, know what she wants to say as a musician and put the music above her own ego.

She attended Juilliard for her master’s degree. She later earned her doctorate at the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Yang’s former professor Lydia Artymiw. Today, Lin is an associate professor at the University of Arizona and has performed across the world, including a recent performance and album with the Polish Wieniawski Philharmonic Orchestra of Lublin. She is a certified yoga instructor — teaching yoga for musicians — surfer, boulderer and practitioner of the martial art Krav Maga.

Weber State set her on her path to success: She won first place in the MTNA National Steinway Young Artist Collegiate Piano Competition as an undergraduate, becoming the youngest student to ever win first place nationally in the competition’s history.

“I remember when I was preparing for the competition; we had a very strict schedule,” she said.

First, she attended lessons, and then she would practice for six hours. After that, she recorded herself performing so she could discuss the recording and how to improve with Yang. She repeated the same schedule the next day. “That really shaped how I prepared for future competitions and concerts,” she said.

Lin’s success inspired other Taiwanese students to study at WSU. One of those students, Chia-Ying Shen BM ’23, won first place at Utah’s MTNA Steinway Young Artist Collegiate Piano Solo Competition. Now, she is earning her master’s degree on a full scholarship at the University of Michigan.

While WSU’s program is a destination for international students, pianists come from nearby as well.

Miranda Vanderpool BM ’22, who lived in North Ogden when accepted, didn’t become serious about piano until her senior year of high school. While every student in the piano program must demonstrate a certain level of skill to be accepted, she still noticed her peers were further ahead.

“It was at first really intimidating for me, and I almost quit my freshman year and changed majors,” she admitted, “but I decided to stick with it and keep working hard.”

A video from Vanderpool’s first year shows Yang teaching her basic hand movement. One filmed three years later features her playing a piece by Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin — with perfect form. Vanderpool eventually began competing alongside WSU’s best pianists in competitions. She won honorable mention at the UMTA State Collegiate Piano Concerto Competition.

When doubting herself, Vanderpool relied on other piano students for encouragement. She recalls Thanksgiving dinner, holiday parties and trips for ice cream with fellow students.

“It was really like a piano family,” she said.

Vanderpool is now completing her master’s degree at the University of Oklahoma. To her surprise, many of her assignments are things she has done at WSU. “A lot of people here have never taught group classes before. At Weber, you are required to help teach,” she said.

She said pianists with big dreams who feel they don’t measure up to their peers should stop comparing themselves and focus on continuing to improve. “And that’s so hard to do in music, because you’re constantly listening to other people play,” she said. “Know that everyone has a different background, everyone started somewhere, and you will get better if you put in the work.”

Lin encourages students to look beyond the notes on the page for inspiration.

“You want to say something; it’s not just about playing the notes,” Lin advises her students. “Whenever you can, you want to find inspiration through literature, movies, films and television, or any other means to find stories that would move people to tears or uplift people’s hearts.”

For weeks before her uplifting performance at the fall jury recital, Peterson practiced the Brahms piece slowly and methodically. The year prior, her many hours of practice led to carpal tunnel and tendonitis in her arms. Through her recovery, she couldn’t wait to return to working on her dream of completing her Bachelor of Music and becoming a piano teacher and event pianist.

Peterson first came to WSU as a radiology major and music minor. The encouragement and welcoming atmosphere she found in the piano program convinced her to change majors.

Like Lin and Vanderpool, she found a place where her talent could blossom.

“It’s a really SPECIAL program,” Peterson said.

Passing on Their Skills

WSU student pianists help inspire the next generation of musicians.

Through the WSU Piano Preparatory Program, a training lab run by Keyboard Studies director Yu-Jane Yang and assistant director Laurisa Cope, WSU students gain experience teaching piano to children ages 6 to 18. If interested in pre-K education, they can become licensed to teach the program’s Kindermusic classes for ages 3 to 7, which Yang directs with instructor Sydnee Johnson. Students also give back to the community by performing for assisted living facilities and other locations.