Reflections …

American Music Teacher, August-Sept, 2004 by Guy Duckworth

On behalf of the MTNA Board of Directors and his more than thirty students present to honor him at the conference this week, I am happy to present the MTNA award for Lifetime Achievement to Guy Duckworth. I studied with Guy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where, in 1970, he established the M.M. and D.M.A. graduate programs in Process of Group Environments: Piano Performance, Literature and Pedagogy. He had formerly held tenured positions at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University.

I was in residence at Colorado for only three years, but his influence continues to fuel my life, my performing and teaching.

I invited Guy to perform a recital in 1976 at what is now Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas, where I was teaching at the time. The review of his excellent performance had the headline "Pianist Talented. " He was also talented as a teacher, person, colleague and friend.

During his public school education in Southern California, which emphasized John Dewey's progressive philosophy, Guy was apprentice-student musician at Warner Brothers and Metro Golden Mayer Studios under the guidance of pianists G.L. Chatterton and M. Rabinowitzi. He brought the Hollywood movie lot to his life's work producing the award-winning television series A New Dimension in Piano Instruction as well as numerous classroom video programs, which most all of his students "starred" in at sometime during their study The Person First and Together is his legacy of describing the processes involved in group teaching.

I can't begin to describe Guy's teaching and the ramifications of his conceptual approach to group teaching in less than a minute. Let me at least give you a glimpse of his work from my perspective as his student. In my piano lesson each week with three or four other doctoral students, his students would play and discuss problems we had in our music, then we got to work. While one played, group members at the other piano would project melodies, reinforce harmonies, conduct and dance to help one another Guy would facilitate and give encouragement, as well as shout admonishments. One day I was particularly tense in my performance of a Bach French Suite, and he yelled, "Sylvia, take off that fig leaf!"

I'll never forget observing Guy teach Priya, a smart and challenging six-year-old in one of my children's groups at Wichita State. Guy always said if a student goes up the wall, go up the wall with them. When Priya and her rhythm were all over the place, they ended up on the floor on their tummies singing "Happy Birthday" to Priya while moving their feet up and down to its meter.

It is a fitting coincidence that this year's Pedagogy Saturday theme was "Teaching for Independence, " since Guy's work embodies this principle. When Guy talks about his students, he describes with passion those moments of student insight when they get it. Just last week I heard him describe with emotion an incident with Ivan Frazier, who gleefully yelled after a successful experience during an MTNA Convention in Denver, "I improvised, I improvised, I really improvised!" Guy has always cared about his students as unique individuals. His teaching has truly been one of caring for the persons first, while maintaining the high standards of his impeccable musicianship. His inspired vision for music education will be remembered by many generations of piano teachers in the twenty-first century.