LBC has provided annual keyboard festivals for 30 years. Teresa Thomason has been a part since the beginning.
STATEWIDE – LBC has provided annual keyboard festivals for 30 years. Teresa Thomason has been a part since the beginning.
“It is our desire that ministers of music and keyboard teachers will see the festivals as an opportunity to challenge and inspire students to play hymns and share their faith through music,” Thomason writes on the LBC website.
The keyboard festivals provide the competition that helps spur piano students to practice playing hymns, which is more difficult than most age-level piano music, explained Pat Marr, who coordinated the keyboard festival that took place recently at Waller Baptist Church in Bossier City for about 85 youngsters and maybe a dozen judges.
That’s down from a fairly constant 120 participants pre-Katrina, she said.
Most music requires the pianist to play two notes with the right hand and one with the left, at the same time, but hymns require four notes, and six for organists, said Marr, who also has been part of the keyboard festivals since their inception in 1979. She is pianist at Waller Baptist, and a long-time piano teacher.
“For hymns you have to read more vertically,” Marr explained. “There’s not a quick way to learn to play the piano. There are helps to move people along more quickly, there’s some computer stuff where you could play along, [but] you need the basics is what you need.”
The number of participants in the keyboard festivals has decreased over the years as children have gotten more involved in school sports, and as parents have allowed their children to not practice, Marr said.
“My mother made me practice,” Marr said. “I didn’t have a choice. You practiced an hour a day, and then you could do something else. You practice first. There are very few parents today who will stand their ground on this like parents did a generation or two ago.
“This is a lifetime skill,” Marr continued. “Soccer is fun for a period of time, but it’s not a skill you can use later on to make money.”
“We did it [start the keyboard festival competition] to help kids get more familiar with hymns,” Marr said. “Baptists sponsor it, but anyone can participate at this level. The high school level is just for Baptists because of the scholarships.”
May 9 at Louisiana College in Pineville is the LBC-sponsored State Piano Festival for teens.