By Kate Luce
A holiday tradition for Discovery Middle School’s Piano Lab will continue at a new and welcoming venue: IU South Bend. Discovery Middle School students performed their holiday recital at IU South Bend in December 2019. In total, 150 Piano Lab students traveled to IU South Bend to perform. Christopher O’Riley was the fall’s first artist in the IU South Bend Piano Series. Before the IU South Bend concert, he visited Discovery School with Cory Iwaszewski, Media and Community Outreach Manager, and Ketavan Badridze, interim Martin Endowed Chair of Piano. O’Riley performed nearly an hour and had a Q & A session with the students. The budding students were thrilled. From that short visit, the relationship was forged. “Christopher O’Riley was our first pianist for the piano series. The kids absolutely adored him. They even wrote him thank you notes, 150 thank you notes,” Dean Marvin Curtis shared. 58
arts.iusb.edu
After the cancellation of the Discovery School’s engagement with University Park Mall, Tammi Bilotta, Piano Lab teacher at Discovery, got into contact with the Arts to propose the idea. Iwaszewski immediately agreed to have the piano lab students perform on the campus during the holiday season. “We had a wonderful experience with him [Christopher O’Riley], and I was hopeful that we could partner with IU South Bend again for my students’ December performances. Cory took my request for the performances to other key people at IU South Bend, and to my delight, they all loved the idea and worked with me to create a plan for how we would hold the event. I feel like IU South Bend and the Raclin School of the Arts rolled out the red carpet for us, and I am very excited and thankful for the opportunity that my students will again have to perform at the University Grill this coming December,” Bilotta says. Piano students worked together in duets and performed holiday and winter classics such as Jingle Bell
Rock, Rockin’ around the Christmas tree, Sleigh Ride, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Carol of the Bells, Deck the Halls, The Little Drummer Boy, and many more. For the sixth-grade piano studio students, this will be one of their first times performing. These students worked hard in practicing the songs in sections both independently and with their partners. They practiced for their songs right up until the date of their performance. “This duet project is an annual event for my students, and they love it! Getting to work on a song with a partner is a treat for them as most of what they do is very individualized. They are highly motivated to learn their songs independently because they love getting to work at the same piano with their partner and put their parts together,” Bilotta says. The Piano Lab students were excited to come to IU South Bend to perform. The School of the Arts, students and
