Author: Callie Maurer | Major: Music | Semester: Summer 2025
Context: Rising senior Calista Maurer is an Honors College Fellow pursuing a Bachelor of Music in piano performance. During the Summer 2025 term, she traveled to Seoul, South Korea for the 15th annual Texas State International Piano Festival.
Blog: South Korea has long been saturating the concert and competition stages with strong pianists. As part of the 15th anniversary of the Texas State International Piano Festival (TSIPF), the director decided to host a “special edition” year in his home country, which is known for its strength in music pedagogy.
Here, I am performing Frédéric Chopin’s Ballade in F minor in the last participant recital at the Texas State International Piano Festival.
Music festivals are important for many reasons: connecting to passionate peers, learning from teachers outside my own bubble, and–most importantly–more chances to perform. TSIPF gave each student up to 6 opportunities to work with combinations of 17 faculty members, which, for me, meant I had 2 lessons and 4 masterclass performances. Since my research focuses on the relationship between mentor-mentee (teacher-student, essentially), this gave me 6 opportunities to assess the teaching style of different teachers, which better informs my research. Outside of this, I was also taking lessons on repertoire that will be a central part of my thesis recital.
Through lessons and masterclasses, I found comments and feedback were especially insightful to me from Drs. Marina Lomazov (Eastman School of Music), Hye-Jung Hong (Missouri State University), and Joseph Rackers (Eastman School of Music). For Dr. Lomazov, I brought a piece by Frédéric Chopin which I had begun in January this year. I’ve known Dr. Lomazov to be incredibly precise and strict with her guidance, but I took care to note her teaching style and how she interacted with students. In masterclass, she would be empathetic to the difficulty of performing that specific piece, comment on things she especially liked, and then dive right into the instruction that would most improve my playing. She was kind and warm but very thorough and strict, having me replay melodies that were not shaped exactly right or physical movements that were not perfect. Throughout her instruction, I was calm, motivated, and right with her the entirety of the class. Outside of the masterclass, she was still all of these traits, exhibiting so much care towards students whether she had met them before or not. Dr. Hong conducts herself much like this, too. I brought her the first movement of a Haydn sonata I have learned and been performing for the last 11 months; she had some wonderfully fresh comments for me and was very clear as to what I could do to have an even clearer sound. She is also warm, kind, and even her instruction feels like an invitation rather than a command. Working with her was so enjoyable, and she allowed enough room for slight deviation from her instruction, but would call me out when I took that too far in my playing. Dr. Hong is also a friend of my faculty members here at UArk, so we sent a photo together to my primary professor. Dr. Rackers is another professor I have had the chance to work with before, and he exceeded my expectations yet again. I brought the first movement of my Beethoven sonata to him in a lesson, and he is especially known to be one of the best teachers for Beethoven (and structural playing in general). Dr. Rackers is also so warm and so kind, but working with him brought a sort of stability and confidence to this movement despite only working together for forty minutes.
César Franck’s student Vincent D’Indy noted aspects of Franck’s character that were especially impactful to his private students. There was a dedication and knowledge of craft, understanding of his art, and then understanding of his pupil. Meeting these teachers at TSIPF added to my understanding of these categories which Franck exceeded for his pupils. Also, through anecdotes by peers at the festival and meeting other teachers, I grew to further understand what does not fulfill all three categories, even if some teachers exceed in two of the three.
As I approach my last year of my bachelor’s, I have the rest of the summer to record two performances and prepare pieces for my thesis recital (which thankfully mostly double as graduate audition repertoire). While my studies and festivals are over for the summer, I will be taking comments and skills that I learned from all three experiences (and 6-10 teachers), applying them to the work I have ahead of me.