**UPDATE** November 10, 2009 – Our partnership was featured in the Wisconsin State Journal! Click here to read the article on Madison.com.

Click the picture to visit the Piano Pioneers website

University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Piano Pioneers program and Steinway Piano Society’s Piano Bank have a common goal, to enrich the Madison community through music by providing scholarship lessons and instruments to those who cannot afford them. Now, united in an exclusive partnership, both programs are even better suited to help deserving students and collaboratively they hope to have a far greater impact on the community.

Piano Pioneers is a unique program through which graduate student teachers are paired up with deserving students, including children and adults. Started in 2005, today there are 22 scholarship students and seven graduate student/teachers involved. The program is made possible through  generous support from the Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment and the Evjue Foundation.

Steinway Piano Society Executive Director Grant Billings volunteered his own piano logistic services to the Pioneers in order to open up more funds for scholarship. “My belief is that it is silly to spend the program’s money to move and maintain pianos when the Steinway Piano Society is set up to do all of that.”

The assistance of the Steinway Piano Society will enable the Piano Pioneers to invite more deserving students to join their program. Jessica Johnson, Associate Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at UW-Madison, believes that, “the partnership will help us change the lives of many Dane County residents who otherwise would have no opportunity to study piano or have access to an instrument at home.  With both factors in place, students will have the best opportunity for success and long-term progress.”

For more information on the Piano Pioneers, please visit www.music.wisc.edu/outreach/piano-pioneers or contact the program coordinator Paola Savvidou at savvidou@wisc.edu