Founder’s Notes 

 

I remember when I was 5 and half years old, I walked across my very first stage performing my first song; it was called Step by step, E D C, C C C, C C C C  C"........., 

It was less than 10 sec. Moreover, then for my very first competition, at eight years old, playing Beethoven's Fur Elise. As I get older and older, it gets scarier and scarier to perform on stage since the fearlessness diminishes as the years go by and realizing the audiences, the crowd, is there watching. 

I remember, it was until I was in Junior high, where I was the piano accompanist for the school choir. We had performances roughly every six weeks, with 3 of them in the year, at the Jubilee auditorium, with over 2500 seats in these concerts. 

The pressure from knowing there are people in the dark audience area, the spotlight shining on me, and the stage rising from the orchestra pit and then really appearing on stage, allowed me to gain more and more stage performing experiences when I was a teenager. 

My teachers told me, the importance of having quality music instruments, opportunities to perform in front of a crowd, and experiences to perform in a formal concert hall with perfectly balanced acoustics, are all essential elements for developing the musician that we all want to be. 

There we are, in one of Calgary's professional musician's stage, Engineered Air Theater in the Arts common. It is my mission to seek the perfect balance opportunity for our students to enjoy what it feels like to walk across the stage like a pro. It might be a little bit nerve wrecking at first, but I can ensure you, sooner or later, just like myself performed my very first solo concert at the Jack Singer concert hall, couple doors down. Back in 1998. I can still remember the feeling of owning the stage and don't want to leave. Since then, I have decided my lifelong partnership with music education, inspiring the younger generations about music and musical performances. 

Besides having quality instruments to practice, opportunities to perform and train our ears, it is also important to have proper techniques for building the foundation. My specialization in group music education focuses myself on training my colleague teachers to provide a complete holistic approach to develop young musicians. We like to use music as a tool, to inspire and empower our students to enhance their growth and development as a whole. We do not need everyone to become professional pianist or violinist when they grow up, but our wish is to have future members of the community who will appreciate the joy of music, the joy of understanding life using the ideology behind routine practices, goal setting, and achievement, etc. 

My music pedagogy concept includes more than just teaching our students how to play a few songs or beautiful sounding music pieces. In the past year, as many of you know, I had performed in numerous concerts with various groups of musicians. I had also traveled a whole lot to meet with musicians who share the same music pedagogy concept as me, in Calgary, Europe, and Asia. From my experiences of performing on various stages and adjudicating music festivals, I have come to known the importance of building technique using theory, scales, studies, and musicianship training from a very young foundation stage. Using my European-inspired methodology, I have recently created MuseKids Musica, as a curriculum to cover areas besides our Music for Young children programs, such as our private piano program, group/private violin program and group musicianship/theory classes. 

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www.musekids.ca

The change of Canadian Royal Conservatory of Music syllabus last year is also one of the reasons for me to create our MuseKids Musica curriculum. The trend of music education is here for us to provide a complete musicianship experience, where students can practically understand the theory behind their everyday music practice, creating a life skill that they can own it for life. As a music teacher, we also partner with parents like yourself in the audience. We are all proud supporters of our young ones to create their unique musical experience. There might be much nagging, reminding or repeating the words "its time for your music practice!" at home, but no matter what, we are here today to celebrate our students' hard work for the entire year. 

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Everyone had worked so hard to perform on this stage today. I hope parents would enjoy seeing their young ones walking across this stage proudly, cheering them on. For students, soak in this proud moment  under the spotlight, because this is a unique opportunity where you can own this stage. 

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Jessica Yuen, PhD(c)music, MBA, MRes, Pg Dipl. (Strings),BA, MYCC

~Principal Opening Speech at Year End Recital June 11, 2017, 

Engineered Air Theater, Arts Common, Calgary Alberta, Canada