Congratulations to Frances Larimer, who has been named MTNA Teacher of the Year, and to Aubrey Faith-Slaker, who has been awarded the MTNA-Piano Technicians Guild Scholarship.
Both will be honored at the MTNA Awards Brunch on Wednesday, March 20th, 10:30am at the National Conference in Spokane, Washington.
Frances Larimer, NCTM, Piano Professor Emerita, created the master's and doctoral degree programs in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the Northwestern University School of Music and served as director of these programs for over 25 years. Prior to this, she established the group piano programs for music and non-music majors. Since her retirement in August 1998, Larimer has served as consultant in piano pedagogy for Yamaha.
Larimer has been active in MTNA for many years. From 1975 to 1979 she served as national group piano chair for MTNA. She has served two, four-year terms on the editorial board of The American Music Teacher and for five years was a music reviewer for Clavier. She was honored as ISMTA Teacher of the Year in 2018.
Aubrey Faith-Slaker maintains a home studio in Chicago and also teaches at the Music Institute of Chicago and Sherwood, the Community Music School at Columbia College. She recently had her application to become a Suzuki Piano Teacher Trainer accepted and plans on finishing that process by the end of this summer. Aubrey has been active in teaching and studying in Central and South America for the past several years and will be giving a presentation on Music Lessons and Mental Health for Today's Distracted Children in Mexico in May at the first Suzuki Conference of the Americas. For some time now, Aubrey has been traveling to Lima, Peru to study and teach at the largest consistently-run Suzuki Festival in Latin America. Her award money from the MTNA-PTG scholarship, which is offered to MTNA certified teachers who use technicians in the technicians guild, will go toward teaching at the next Festival Suzuki de Peru. She has been MTNA certified since 2006. Aubrey received her BM in performance and pedagogy at the University of Illinois and her MM at Southern Methodist University.
