Connecting Generations Through Music

by Arthur Kane

For over fifty years I have been teaching at The Music Settlement. By giving me the opportunity to teach and perform, TMS has impacted my life immeasurably.

Music has always been my life, as I come from a family of musicians. From the age of three I have been involved in music, when my grandmother began teaching me piano. And I have continued in music ever since—as a teacher, performer, and church musician. I performed recitals and concerts here in the United States and in Europe.

My teaching of piano, harpsichord, and organ has brought me students of all ages, backgrounds, and talent levels. This pushes me to change hats for every lesson so I can work at my students’ level and meet their musical needs. So even though I have earned three conservatory degrees, I always continue to learn from my students!

In private and class lessons with students with special needs, I have created a “bridge” to our Music Therapy Center, and I encourage other teachers to work with these students to help them reach their therapeutic goals through music.

As Department Head at TMS, I have worked collaboratively with my piano staff to create a piano curriculum that includes contests and themed student and faculty recitals. And when I founded the Piano Camps at TMS, I was able to be creative in developing themes for the camps and ideas on how to pass on musical knowledge to our students.

For example, a few years ago, while conducting research on my family tree, it occurred to me that I could do a themed Piano Camp based on a “Teacher Tree”—tracing back our musical learning lineage to help us see how music connects us across generations and centuries.

Beginning with catalogs from the conservatories I attended and then by online searches, I traced my own roots back to Beethoven, Czerny, and even Bach! I have copies of my own “Teacher Tree” that I give to my students, and I encourage everyone to research their own “Teacher Tree”!

We all pass on what we learned from our teachers. After we are gone, we live on in what we taught to our students, just as our teachers live on through us. That’s immortality!

Being at The Music Settlement brings me joy, beauty, and fulfillment through the love of music. When I am at the Settlement, I feel alive, knowing that I am doing what I was meant to do. What a great feeling this is!