Creative industries in Washtenaw County add hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy. In the weeks and months to come, host Deb Polich, the President and CEO of Creative Washtenaw, explores the myriad of contributors that make up the creative sector in Washtenaw County.
ABOUT VEENA KULKARNI-RANKIN:
Veena is the Lead Instructor at the Faber Piano Institute. She’s been teaching there for almost 19 years! As she was completing her doctorate in Piano Pedagogy and Performance at the University of Michigan in 2005, she ran into Randy Faber at Gallup Park while kayaking. The rest is history.
Randy & Nancy Faber are the founders of the Piano Adventures library of piano methods books. These books are – far and away – the number one choice of books for piano teachers in the United States, and are well-known internationally. They’ve been translated into 8 languages and were the starting point for many a professional musician, as well as hundreds of thousands of other students!
Piano Adventures books have a magic blend of modern teaching approaches to piano: different books for differently-aged beginners, an amazing assortment of musical styles, a creative and playful way of imparting nuanced and effective piano technique, an integrated approach to teaching the basics of music theory, and of course, great original pieces. Nancy Faber composes and arranges incredibly attractive pieces for beginners, so many of my students can’t wait to get their fingers on the keys.
The multi-faceted approach of the Piano Adventures books mirrors my own musical journey. I was once mostly a classical pianist, completing my degree with a focus on the Piano Concerto by America’s first well-known women composer, Amy Marcy Cheney Beach.
My love of listening to jazz – often on WEMU! – evolved into improvising with other musicians, and today I am in two world music-adjacent groups: Kuwento Mizik with baritone Jean Bernard Cerin, which is a crossover classical duo, performing music and stories from around the world. In fact, we just gave a concert at Cornell University in Ithaca where JB is a professor. You can hear our album, Lua Nova on all the streaming platforms. Our producer and percussionist was John Churchville, an amazing musician and teacher in Ann Arbor, who performed with Peter Madcat Ruth in C.A.R.Ma.
My other group is called AgawDilim, and features the Persian santoor, played by Babak Soleimani (pronounced BAH-bek Soh-le MAH-ny). I join on keys, Chris Pyke drums, and bassist Franky Bennett III, all local musicians. We’ll be releasing an EP soon, stay tuned!
RESOURCES:
Faber Piano Institute Contact Info
Faber Piano Institute on Facebook
Piano Adventures on X (Twitter)
TRANSCRIPTION:
Deb Polich: Welcome to creative:impact on 89 one WEMU. This is our ongoing feature that looks at the arts and creative industries in Washtenaw County, and it helps us understand how these artists and creative workers and businesses shape our quality of life place and the local economy. I'm Deb Polich, president and CEO of Creative Washtenaw and your host. And I'm very pleased to welcome Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin into the show. Veena earned her doctorate in piano performance and pedagogy at the University of Michigan. She is a performer. She's involved with at least two ensembles, and I hope to say these properly, Kuwento Mizik Crossover and AgawDilim. They're both cultural heritage ensembles that that mix heritage with Western classical training. To our conversation, she is the lead instructor of the Faber Piano Institute. We're going to focus on that and her work at the institute. Veena, welcome to the show, and thanks for being with us!
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: I'm glad to be here!
Deb Polich: So, the Faber Institute is located right here. The Faber Piano Institute is located right here in Ann Arbor. And it was founded by Randall and Nancy Faber. Tell us about the philosophy behind the Fabers' teaching method and curriculum.
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: Nancy and Randy loved memorable acronyms, and one of the acronyms that capture their method and approach is ACE: Analyze, Create and Express. So, apart from having an inclusive approach to different styles, they also play into what motivates the child or the teenager or the adult who's starting piano. Tap into that motivation. Get into what is fun, what motivates them and what encourages them along their musical journey. So, the books have both, obviously, the basics of music in technique, but also invitations to improvise and to compose in small ways. So, they're very creative and encouraging of exploration and curiosity for students of all ages.
Deb Polich: So, you mentioned the books and, obviously, you're using this method--the ACE method or the Faber Institute Piano Institute method. How does that differ from a traditional piano teaching method?
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: In some ways, it does mirror other ways of teaching. In fact, the books, Piano Adventures, which are their main library of books, they pull upon well-known approaches to piano pedagogy. I would say that their approach to technique is very creative and memorable and the mix of styles. And I think the differences are pretty nuanced. So, those mixes of styles and this inclusion of popular genres, it's getting to be pretty common among other method books. But they were some of the earlier, I would say, writers to include that in their method books.
Deb Polich: And I'm going to guess that you trained yourself in what we would call a more traditional piano teaching method. Did you have to adapt your either playing or teaching very much to fit in with the Faber method?
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: Well, I love this question because that's an understatement! And so, yes, I had a more traditional approach. And I was taught piano in the late 70s, early 80s. So, I had the John Thompson method, which was pretty good. As we know, that lasted for decades, and some teachers still use it. My own teaching started pretty early. So, I've been teaching for decades. And when I first finished my bachelor's, I was a teacher that I wouldn't recognize now.
Deb Polich: Oh, wow!
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: Where I made my students look at the notes and just only read the notes. I wouldn't encourage playing by ear. I wouldn't encourage learning off the bench. Now, my teaching has adapted to the method and beyond, where students can learn a piece by ear, by road, by video, even we sing it. We use techniques that choral instructors would use, showing the pictures in the air. And it's much more creative. It's much more fun and open. Even on my end as a teacher, I'm more engaged. So, I would say I've become open to learning in all the ways that people are music, not just by opening up a page of music and pointing to the notes and following that. It's been very freeing and really a realistic mirror to how people learn music in the world.
Deb Polich: It's so interesting! 89 one WEMU's creative:impact continues with Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin. She is the lead piano instructor at the Faber Piano Institute. So, you said people can learn in all these different ways by ear or watching video or whatever. Do they end up being able to read music and is that still important?
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: It definitely is important. And they do read. I would say there's no rush, and there's no need to make that the first approach of learning music. Like many methods, the Piano Adventures method by Nancy and Randy is not the only one out there. But I would say the best ones mimic the way we learn language, which is definitely not by reading a book. As humans and as babies, we're listening. We're babbling. We're trying stuff out. And this mother language approach is really what we copy in the Piano Adventures books. I want to say also that Randy and Nancy also put a lot of energy with their team of producers into teacher training. So, it's not just that you have this great book, but how should we use it? And the training that happens from the Faber Piano Institute is a really far reaching through webinars, through Randy speaking at events. That teacher training makes a world of difference. So, it's not just the books.
Deb Polich: Got it! So, you mentioned music in the same sentence as language. And we understand that music is a language. In your opinion, is it something that is more easily learned at a young age, or could it be somebody like me who's always wanted to play? Could I actually become pretty decent at it?
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: Yes, you can!
Deb Polich: All right!
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: You can start today! I would agree that learning it earlier does make it easier, but not necessarily. The younger people and children in our lives, of course, are more malleable. But what we have as adults is we've been listening to music for much longer times. So, we have this whole repertoire of sounds and rhythms and phrasing that we've been listening to. We have tastes that we love. And that is not a small thing when you start to learn to play an instrument.
Deb Polich: The Faber Piano Institute actually has a physical plant. I mean, a place where I understand it has an auditorium. You know, it's a little different than what we think of often when we think about piano teachers sitting at a console at their house or in somebody else's house. How important is that kind of a facility to the development of your students?
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: Well, the students are very lucky, I have to say. We have little teaching studios for one-on-one, and we also have a group teaching room.
Deb Polich: Okay.
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: And, again, I would say this is a model that's true of most communities' music schools, small spaces, and then a place for the piano lab where the labs have headphones where students could work individually on a piano. But we have those things, as well as a little recital hall, so students can see the trajectory of study with a teacher to recital time. And we also happen to rent out the hall. So, around the end of each semester, you hear a lot of music.
Deb Polich: I bet!
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: And that's very motivating to hear people performing and hear the applause. Or it can be frightening.
Deb Polich: So, I can hear in your voice that you really enjoy doing this. Give me a quick synopsis of what this means to you.
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: I love seeing students develop. I love encouraging what drives them and why do they study music. And what are the skills they really want to have? That's what I look for as I teach. And I enjoy learning what encourages students. So, my time at the Faber Piano Institute has been wonderful because there's a group of us that encourage each other and problem solve and try new ideas out. So, my teaching has gotten more creative as it's gone along. And I'm thankful to the Faber Piano Institute for that!
Deb Polich: And I'm sure that just spills completely over to your students! Veena, thank you so much for being on the show! We really appreciate it!
Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin: My pleasure!
Deb Polich: That's Dr. Veena Kulkarni-Rankin, lead instructor at the Faber Piano Institute. Find out more about her and the institute at wemu.org. You've been listening to creative:impact. I'm Deb Polich, president and CEO of Creative Washtenaw and your host. Mat Hopson is our producer. Please join us every Tuesday to meet the people who make Washtenaw creative. This is 89 one WEMU FM, Ypsilanti. Public radio from Eastern Michigan University.
If you'd like to a guest on creative:impact, email Deb Polich at deb.polich@creativewashtenaw.org.
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