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Campus News
     
Your faculty and staff news since 1965
Special Spotlight Issue:  April 22, 2002

Madland founds UNM-LA concert series

By Samantha Beres

Juanita MadlandMusic Professor Juanita Madland can often be seen walking across the courtyard of UNM-Los Alamos with her overflowing work bag that looks like it weighs about 20 pounds. She probably couldn’t survive without it.

Inside is a date book filled to the max with piano lesson appointments, music classes and performances. Then, there are music history books, CDs and music pieces for her students.

A pianist and world-renowned performer, she is as passionate about teaching as she is about playing. “It is totally fascinating for me to see how music can transform a person,” Madland says. “Playing the piano is very holistic; it affects your whole body. I think this is why I have watched students go through wonderful personal transformations after taking up the piano.”

The whole body approach is one that Madland takes in teaching the piano, with a focus on the different ways people store memory. “The tactile touch of the keys is enjoyable,” she says. “A child likes that feeling, but as you get older you can’t depend on it for everything. So, I prepare my students to use all different ways to learn and remember. If one memory fails, another memory should kick in.”


“It is totally fascinating for me to see how music can transform a person,” Madland says. “Playing the piano is very holistic; it affects your whole body.


For instance Madland will sometimes have students close their eyes and find different notes on the piano to work with “spacial” memory. Other times she’ll work with speed or loudness. These different ways to obtain “memories” are based on the work of Howard Gardner, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins.

Her teaching philosophy has also been shaped by her mentor Evelyne Brancart, under whom she studied while getting her masters in music at UNM in 1989. “Evelyne believed that performers have an obligation to pass on what they know, and I agree with her.”

When Madland isn’t working with the already-interested, in very subtle ways she brings music to others’ lives. This past January she started a Concert Series at UNM-LA to bring the public onto campus for good music, and to raise funds for a grand piano.

She says, “A lot of times you get hooked on something and you don’t even know you’re getting hooked on it. I try to get people hooked on music. Ultimately, my goal with teaching is to try to help people be happy.”