A
career begins with a toddler’s tiny fingers looking for middle C on
a piano keyboard. It blossoms when a teenager sits alongside the
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and plays something like Beethoven’s
"Concerto No. 1 in C major, Opus 15."
JoAnne Krause has spent a lifetime as a piano teacher, music
organizations’ board member and, since 2003, passionate facilitator
for PianoArts, which conducts a National Biennial Piano Competition
and Music Festival. She’s a major reason young pianists’ careers
bloom.
PianoArts’ goals are twofold. On one hand, to say it assists
aspiring young pianists is an understatement. The winner of the
competition, held in June every two years, takes away $18,000, wins a
scholarship, performs with the MSO’s full orchestra and participates
in master classes, to mention just a few of the rewards received for
diligently practicing their scales.
On the other hand, additional winners are the listeners who delight
in the magnificent performances and the many school children who get
to hear and learn from the pianist who visits their school while
serving a year as an artist in residence.
Krause’s advice to parents? "Don’t push your child into
music. If the child has passion, they’ll ask for the
opportunity."
Past winners have validated their PianoArts’ victory by
distinguishing themselves nationally and internationally. That
category includes the likes of Michelle Naughton (2006) who has
performed in Cleveland, Chicago and the distinguished Artist’s
Series in Sarasota, Fla. Jie Chen (2003) has gone on to win top prizes
at the Arthur Rubenstein International competition and played
Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Not one to take credit, Krause attributes the group’s 10 years of
success to include individuals like Sue Medford, Lee Dougherty Ross
and Glen Wuest, to mention just a few. Since the young competitors
come from all over the United States, Krause and other volunteers host
them, and she says that’s a wonderful fringe benefit to be temporary
family of such talented youth.
Krause, who wears a keyboard pin on her lapel, fairly trills when
talking about music. She says she got her start in piano as a child in
Shell Lake, Wis., when her parents purchased a Baldwin Acrosonic
spinet right off a truck driving through the neighborhood. "That’s
the way they sold them in those days," says the grandmother of
six. Nowadays, a grand sits in her home. The beautiful soprano voice
she blended into the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus for 17 years was
probably inherited from her maternal grandmother.
