Mission: Possible!

Everything we do at the Utah Piano Conservatory centers around our mission, which is to “provide excellent piano instruction through the simultaneous development of Talent and Testimony, our dual pillars of instruction.”

Our hope is that as we focus on improving talent and strengthening testimony, our students will find self-confidence and will be able to use their music to bless other people’s lives. That’s our goal.

But for our mission to really benefit the students, it actually needs to be a three-way effort between the groups involved: the Utah Piano Conservatory, the students, and their parents. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 12—he teaches that the church is made up of different members and parts, just like the body. But even though each part is different, it’s necessary for the body to work right. In our case, for our students to reach their full potential, all parts of our system need to do their part and contribute.

Our part as the Utah Piano Conservatory is to provide good teaching and lots of opportunities for the students to perform. All of our piano teachers and computer lab teachers have been trained for years in music, and they have lots of experience teaching. We also have quarterly trainings to talk about teaching strategies that work well and how we can improve. Also every quarter we have two recitals: one out in the community and one at the Conservatory. These are both fantastic opportunities for the students to learn and give their gift of music to others.

The students’ part is both really simple and really hard: all they need to do is practice! But sometimes practicing can be a challenge, especially if they are working on a hard piece. However, the more students practice, the faster they will learn their pieces and the more fun they will have! One of our teachers wrote a blog post on how to make practicing more effective—check it out here!

The responsibility of the parents is to provide their students with the vision that will keep them moving forward. Our assistant director, Laura, says that if it wasn’t for her mom’s encouragement when she was learning piano, she would have quit the minute her pieces started to get harder. Her mom knew that in the long run, learning to play the piano would have a huge impact on Laura’s life and would make her a better person. And it did!

When all of the members of our Conservatory work together, we see true success. Then we can honestly say mission: possible!