Introducing Don and Delayna Beattie, creators of the Piano Wizard Music Academy

Early Learning Teaching Your Child Music
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Dear parents,

As promised we have been busy working on a few special bonuses for Brillkids parents. One that is very special is my mentor Don Beattie and his wife Delayna, the team that helped create the Piano Wizard Academy have agreed to join this forum. Let me give you some background on them, both general and specific.

Don and Delayna Beattie

During the course of their careers, Don and Delayna Beattie have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands with their enthusiastic love of music and young people, gift for piano teaching and special devotion to Beethoven. Individually and together, they have appeared in music programs, performances and festivals in all fifty of the United States, Canada, Germany and Austria. In June of this year, Don retired after 30 years as Director of Piano Pedagogy in the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale while Delayna has enjoyed a thirty year professional career as an independent music teacher. They are parents of four children and proud grandparents of Emma Elizabeth.

They have been blessed with countless opportunities to share their love of music and people as founder and directors of the Beethoven Society for Pianists, published authors and composers with Edition HAS and Warner Bros. with their compositions performed at the White House and throughout the world, teachers and performing artists for school children throughout the country, church music performers, master of ceremonies for World Piano Pedagogy Conferences, featured clinicians in Music Teacher National Association Conventions and for G. Henle music publishers and as founders and directors of Piano Wizard Academy and authors of the Piano Wizard Academy’s music curriculum and 50 DVD piano lesson series for Music Wizard Group. Currently, they are “house parents” to 300 college students in an apartment community in Carbondale, Illinois where human kindness, music, food and friendship mix to create one of the most outstanding living experiences for young people in their community.

On a personal note, Don’s work as a new group piano teacher at Carbondale over 30 years ago changed my life profoundly. Through his work I learned not only to play piano but to play things like Back fugues, Chopin Preludes, Beethoven Sonatas and works of Debussey, Bartok and more. I not only learned about piano but about music, and education and bringing love and spirit into the classroom. I ended up with a double major in music and linguistics though I had no prior music experience before college, his teaching and influence were that profound and effective. Years later when I developed the Piano Wizard game I shared it with my old friend and he made several suggestions, and then offered to develop the curriculum for it. That "research and development took about 18 months or so, and then he came to my son’s school and did a “boot camp” for the kids for a week, and blew us all away with the impact and excitement of that magic combination of the game, his and Delayna’s curriculum, and their hands on teaching. I realized that they could bring all the elements of music to the game that it was missing, and make it a profound vehicle for true musical enrichment and learning. We all invested another 18 months or more into creating a 50 lesson video series, and extending even further the original curriculum, and thus was born the Piano Wizard Academy. While not perfect, and always complemented by great music teacher, it is a breakthrough in music learning, even more powerful because it empowers the parents to coach their children in music without having to do all the heavy training and lifting normally required.

Don is the greatest teacher of any subject I ever had, and it is my blessing and privilege to share he and Delayna and their work with Brillkids parents and the world. He changed my life, and I hope he can help you change your children’s lives for the better as well.

Thanks

Chris

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Thanks, Chris. Don and Delayna both seem like really good teachers from the videos that I saw. Maybe you could post some videos of them?

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KL,

Here is a video with the more manic side of Don

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxpg6M6WNJQ

And here is one where he is more reflective and speaks from his heart. Though Piano Wizard Academy lessons are not religious in any way, afterwards we let the camera roll and let Don share his views on the spirit and music. He is a very strong Christian, but his true religion is music I think, when he speaks of Bach and Beethoven, these are his saints. Even his wife is kind of impressed how he waxes poetic about Bach. I personally never saw him speak like this in class, though I had him for 4 years, and have known him for 30, so it is kind of sweet for me to see this very passionate side of him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6pPKxWQIEo

While I really agree with Don about Bach and music and vibration being the primary reality, and material the secondary,I am more of a “zen Buddhist lunatic” in my beliefs. Though the Academy comes with bonus Christian hymns, the actual content of the lessons is not religious, it is more universal than that, as you can see in this example below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbN0xql2Dp0&NR=1

By the way, this reminds me of a lecture by Baba Ram Dass, who came to my college and lectured on Eastern religious thought. He came dressed in typical Indian “guru” garb, sat on a blanket in front of a bunch of college kids, and quietly began to chant, or rather sing

"Row row row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

Life is but a dream"

He then “explained” the song

"Row row row your boat

(Work, and make your own way in life)

Gently down the stream

(Go with the flow)

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

(Do it with good spirit, happily)

Life is but a dream"

(life is an illusion, or maya)

NOW sing it, and isn’t it a bit different?

Many ways to the top.

Enjoy,

Thanks

Chris

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Wao… it’s a creative and optimistic way of singing the song and view life from a different perspective lol

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Good Evening Friends,

We thank our dear friend, Chris Salter, for his kind introduction of us to all of you. We consider it a privilege to be a part of this forum and will be happy to interact with others about the importance of music education for our children. We have devoted our lives to music through piano teaching and our lifelong friendship with Chris Salter resulted from our musical friendship that began many years ago in the classroom. We especially look forward to the teleconference calls that will begin in January and look forward to future opportunities to meet many of you as we share our mutual love of music and children.

Not so many years ago, when Johann Sebastian Bach was a school age boy, the two most important subjects in his school curriculum were theology and music. In an excellent book entitled, “Bach’s World,” by Jan Chiapusso, he wrote that “were it not for an unshaken faith in the spiritual power of music, the world would never have known the musical genius of Bach or Beethoven.” Our lives have so benefited from Bach and Beethoven and the growth of our faith and musical learning have gone hand in hand.

When Bach composed his “Two and Three Part Inventions” for keyboard, he prefaced the compostions by writing that they were written for the personal enjoyment and learning of the player. He was not writing for an audience and his emphasis was on personal growth, not concert performance. When Beethoven wrote his “Missa Solemnis,” he inscribed the manuscript “from the heart, may it go to the heart.”

It seems so often, we view music eduation as preparation for a performance career and yet we require our children to study mathematics knowing full well that they are not doing to so to prepare for careers as mathematicians. We like very much to remember that music comes from the word “muse,” to think. And what is it that we think in music? The great pianist Cladio Arrau defined musical interpretation as “adhering to the interpretation directions of the composer and from that point, taking our own flight of imagination.”

In our experience in music study and teaching, music education is an experience whereby we become sensitive to our feelings, our thoughts, to the world around us and, in turn, come to understand how musical concepts: key, scale, form, dynamics, rhythm, phrase, tempo, timing and others help us to shape emotional and imaginative ideas into sound. We watch children become more sensitive to music and, in turn, become more senstive to themselves, to those around them and to the world around them.

In our musical lives, we have watched music have a profound influence on children and their families. In some cases, we have literally watched music save people’s lives. We watch the discipline of music study nurture the sheer sense of discipline and problem solving that transfers to every subject and pursuit. In the act of performance and performance practice, we watch children learn to listen not only to music but to others. In our experience, music education helps to nurture the essential life skills of listening, feeling, thinking and caring. In short, we have been privileged to watch children become more senstive and caring human beings because of music. From this perspective, we believe that music is both a birthright and, for parents, an opportunity to nurture their best dreams of what they’d like to see their children become in life. From this perspective, music education is not just our birthright, it is an opportunity, with great music, to find some of the greatest guidance one can find in life.

In conclusion, we have spent a great part of our life with the music and teachings of Beethoven. We will never forget the performance opportunity we had following 9/11 when we joined together with some of the great pianists of the world, at six pianos, with choir and vocal solosists to perform his Symphony No. 9 “Ode to Joy.” As the choir pleaded for “all men to be as brothers” the church audience of 2,000 from 20 countries that night “heard” Beethoven. They heard our words that the word “evil” is the word “live” spelled backwards and those that get completely turned around in life can become evil. Music for Beethoven was life and a commitment to finding the joy in this precious gift of life. Throughout our lives, we have found music to be a doorway to our hearts and souls and the great composers like Beethoven have similarly guided all of our students in this same joyful discovery.

We applaud our friend, Chris Salter, for his creation of Piano Wizard and for his efforts to make piano accessible to everyone at any age. We applaud everyone of this forum who cherish and value the life of our children. We sincerely thank you for the opportunity that we may have to share our thoughts and hearts on the subject of music and the incomparable love that it brings to all our lives. Thank you and God bless.

Best wishes,
Don and Delayna Beattie

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Awesome Don, I remember our classes together so many years ago and how inspiring you were then as you are now. I think you are really going to enjoy this forum and the folks that end up with the Brillkids bundle who join you on the teleconferences for tips and guidance. They are a great group, very passionate and sharing, and I am delighted to share you with them.

Thanks

Chris

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I might also add that Delayna brings decades (OK, only 2 decades, I don’t want to date her too much) of experience teaching children, and was instrumental in developing the Piano Wizard Academy in a way that would be right for them, and in alignment with their natural development. Having such deep experiences, she was very surprised how fast the children assimilated things she often struggled for months to convey, and how few children dropped out (Only one child left the group of the 20 original chosen, and that because they moved away). She also remarked how the “boot camp” recital after only 4 days with the game had “no tears or trauma!”. I was surprised, and asked if tears and trauma were “normal” for first piano recitals, and both she and Don nodded sadly that that was often the “norm”. During the teleseminars, she may be able to lend special insight into how your children can be encouraged and how they can expect to progress at certain ages or stages.

Thanks

Chris

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I’ve merged those posts into this thread now.

Thanks for posting and welcome to the Forum, Don and Delayna! :slight_smile:

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KL,

Thanks for pruning our forum garden, I actually find myself lost in the threads sometimes, but enjoying myself along the way.

Chris