Open House

Friday June 21 3pm to 6pm

We are excited to be showcasing Chicago Piano & Drums as a part of Make Music Chicago

We will be featuring performances as well as

Alaska

Last Fall, Piano Teacher Phoebe Wu's Tour of Alaska

Back in October, I traveled to Southeast Alaska to present the solo concert tour: No Longer Very Clear. The program featured the music of many American composers from the last 100 years; it celebrated their different backgrounds, the contrasting lives they lead and led, and their vibrant and distinctive musical voices. Just a few composers that were featured include:

• Gabriela Lena Frank, who currently lives on a small farm in California and whose father is American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent;
• Florence Price, who moved with her family in 1912 from Little Rock, Arkansas to Chicago to seek out a more integrated environment to raise her family and in which to work as a musician and composer;
• Ruth Crawford Seeger, best known for her work in preserving and teaching American folk music, but first made herself known as a serialist modern classical composer; and
• Lou Harrison: from the west coast; a pacifist; openly gay starting in 1934 at the age of 17; fluent in ASL, Mandarin, and Esperanto; and whose wildly interesting and pertinent information couldn’t possibly fit here, much like all these composers.

I flew (and ferried) to a total of four communities: Sitka, Juneau (the capital and the largest city on the tour, a whopping 30,000 people), Haines, and Skagway (the smallest stop on the tour, a rough population count of 1,000). I made a point of including education as part of the performing tour, giving private lessons and daytime school-wide demonstrations along the way.

Alaska, because I had taught at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in 2018 and I fell in love with the town, the community, and the culture fostered at the camp for the kids. Small towns deserve quality, live music.

October, because this tour was for local Alaskans. Summer tourism is a significant part of the economy in Southeast Alaska, with cruise ships moving through the Inside Passage from April through September, docking in each place for a day or two and effectively temporarily doubling (or tripling) the total population count in a given community. Many folks work long days in the summer and rest in the winter. October is just at the end of the tourism season, the perfect time to appear with an unusual, intriguing musical concert.

No Longer Very Clear was generously supported by the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation, as well as Sitka Fine Arts Camp, Sally Schlichting and the Con Brio Chamber Series, the Skagway Arts Council, and the Haines Arts Council.

Student Portal

New Feature for students at CPaD

A new addition to our website is our student portal, where current students will be able to find extra resources and helpful information.

Here's the link: Student Portal

New Website

For 2024, we've completely overhauled our website!

Welcome to the new website for Chicago Piano & Drums, where you can find information about lessons, our staff, and hear from our students. We are also excited to have a new feature for current students - a student portal where you can access extra resources and find materials from lessons.

Regular updates will be found on this page!