US-based Chinese musician innovates on news ways to cultivate talent

As American music schools grapple with growing pressure to demonstrate career relevance, a United States-based Chinese musician is taking multi-pronged moves to help cultivate more talent.

"In doing so, I am helping redefine what collegiate class piano can contribute to the education of 21st century musicians," Shen said.

As American music schools grapple with declining enrollment and growing pressure to demonstrate career relevance, a quieter debate is unfolding inside a course most students simply call a requirement: class piano — which is an essential part of the collegiate music curriculum.

Shen is treating it much more than a basic keyboard requirement. In her class piano courses, she has taught students not only scales, chord inversions, sight-reading patterns, and accompaniment techniques, but also how to apply these skills through meaningful repertoire.

Her teaching prepares students to use the piano functionally, flexibly, and musically in the real situations they will encounter after graduation.

One of Shen's most distinctive contributions is her use of international folk songs and culturally diverse repertoire in the group piano classroom.

Her doctoral dissertation, Culturally Responsive Curriculum: Incorporating Chinese Folk Songs in Class Piano, developed a supplementary curriculum using Chinese folk songs to support functional piano training.

In 2025, her dissertation abstract was published in the MTNA e-Journal, establishing her work within the national piano pedagogy field.

One of the techniques she uses is yu yao wei — literally "fish biting tail"— a device in which the final pitch or motif of one phrase becomes the opening of the next, creating a continuous interlocking chain.

A second technique, drawn from her doctoral research, comes from a work called A Xi Tiao Yue and a compositional principle called huan tou he wei — varying the opening while preserving the ending — which allows a composition to shift character while maintaining structural continuity. Shen adapts this into short variation and improvisation exercises.

Besides Chinese folk song, Shen has also arranged and taught pieces such as Japanese folk song Sakura Sakura, Uruguayan tango La Cumparsita, and Brazilian classic Tico-Tico no Fuba.

"We have to make innovative means in a practical approach by using a single piece of repertoire to develop multiple functional skills," she said.

For Shen, repertoire is not merely content; it is a vehicle for skill-building, cultural listening, and professional preparation.

At SUNY Fredonia, Shen has continued to expand this work through an ongoing reform of the class piano curriculum.

In 2026, she co-authored All-in-One Repertoire: Developing Functional Piano Skills through One Piece with her colleague Jiyong Kim Mai for School Music News, presenting a practical approach to using a single piece of repertoire to develop multiple functional skills.

Her earlier presentations also reveal the evolution of this work. In 2024, Shen presented Beyond Western Culture: Promoting Diversity in Group Piano Classes at both the Music Teachers National Association National Conference in Atlanta and the ISME World Conference in Helsinki.

More recently, her 2026 guest lecture at Bowling Green State University — Collegiate Class Piano Teaching: Preparing for Teaching Assistant Interviews — reflected her growing role in preparing emerging teachers for collegiate class piano instruction.

Across these publications, lectures, and conference presentations, Shen's core competency is clear: she understands class piano as a professional musicianship course rather than a narrow keyboard requirement.

In Shen's classroom, a class piano course can become a bridge between technical training and future professional practice.

Shen said she has been reflecting on the same question herself. In the age of AI, this generation has easier access to knowledge than any generation before it. The real question, she said, is what unique value teachers can still provide to their students.

This is the significance of Shen's work: she is not only teaching students to play piano; she is teaching them to think, listen, accompany, adapt, and communicate musically through the piano.

Please contact the writer at yinmingyue@chinadaily.com.cn