Category: General

Dr. Justin Krueger on “Exploring Beyond Methods: Navigating the Less Charted Waters of Piano Repertoire”

Justin Krueger

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music
B.A., St. Norbert College
M.M., Wichita State University 
D.M.A., West Virginia University
Justin Krueger NCTM teaches in the piano area at St. Norbert College. He is a nationally certified teacher of music and an active member of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), Wisconsin Music Teachers Association (WMTA) and Fox Valley Music Teachers Association (FVMTA). He serves as director of liturgy and worship at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Neenah, WI. He is also the director for the Green Bay Diocesan Chorale and maintains an independent piano studio.

Krueger is active as a performer, adjudicator and a collaborative pianist, who serves currently as the FVMTA president and as the Vice President of Membership for WMTA. He has presented at various local, state and national conferences and workshops, including the 2019 WMTA Conference in Eau Claire, Wis., the 2019 MTNA Conference in Spokane, Wash., and the 2016 National Conference on Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy at Oberlin College. His article “Smartphones, Tablets, and Chocolate Cake,” was published in AMT Magazine in 2019. His musical instructors have included Peter Amstutz, Andrew Trechak, Sylvia Coats and Elaine Moss.

Michael Rivers on “Historically Informed Teaching”

Michael Rivers gave a delightful presentation on “Historically Informed Teaching” at our April meeting. His question was – how do we as teachers make the music more interesting for our students? Perhaps we can tell our students that Mozart put the stems going down on what we would consider to be the “wrong” side in his music? Or that Clementi made his own piano? That Bach did not memorize? For our students with the somewhat unreadable pages in their theory books, perhaps they would be encouraged to know that Beethoven’s handwriting was so difficult to read that the publisher would often make mistakes in printing it, which of course made him furious! A fact for our students who don’t want to practice could be that Brahms was just like them; his sister Clara would sit beside him to make him practice. These and so many more anecdotes and historical contexts made for an hour and a half that flew by. We thank Michael for sharing!

Michael Rivers has been a member of the faculty at Lawrence Community Music School since 1999. A native of Geneva, Illinois, he received his Bachelor of Music in piano performance from DePaul University and his Masters in Music in piano performance and pedagogy from Northwestern University. He is an accompanist for the studio of Joanne Bozeman at Lawrence Conservatory of Music and is a member of WMTA. He lives in Appleton with his wife and three cats.