The Festival for Creative Pianists has an over 20 year history of delivering creative music education opportunities to piano students and teachers. This program took place in Idaho for a few years and Colorado (Denver and Grand Junction) through 2019. This opportunity was developed by Dr. Arthur Houle, who remains a champion of this work and an Artistic Director for the organization. Click here to read a blog post written by Dr. Arther Houle in 2018 that provides more details about the history, philosophy, and inception of the festival.
After many years as a summer program, the festival joined forces with Abundant Silence in 2015 to bring more composition and voices of living composers into the work of the festival. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Festival for Creative Pianists became a 501c3 organization, with Abundant Silence as a publishing wing of the organization, continuing to release sheet music and commission new works by 21st Century composers who focus on the piano as a core instrument of their work.
The Festival for Creative Pianists is excited for our next phase as we develop a new partnership with the Adamant Music School in Vermont to expand and deepen our summer program, while continuing to offer our online community and publishing of new works through Abundant Silence. Our underlying philosophy of helping pianists of all ages and piano teachers celebrate and discover the depths of their creativity.
“The Festival for Creative Pianists is part of a growing movement “to loosen the strictures of perfectionism and literalism that have gradually eviscerated the interpreter’s art in this age of ‘note-perfect’ recordings and competitions, and to reemphasize the beautiful, the imaginative.”
– John Salmon
The Festival for Creative Pianists has been honored to host a slate of amazing world-class teaching artists from across the United States and Canada. See below for a list of teaching artists who have contributed to our mission and programs:
The Festival for Creative Pianists proudly supports music teacher groups across the United States. The Denver Area Music Teachers Association and the Columbine Music Teachers Association have been an integral support of the festival for years. The Festival for Creative Pianists is now partnering with the Adamant Music School. Adamant’s beautiful campus will provide a unique and inspiring setting in the mountains of Central Vermont for our summer in-person festival.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Festival for Creative Pianists quickly pivoted to delivering an online version of the festival so that pianists across the world could continue to have creative opportunities for skill building. That virtual opportunity has now morphed into our online festival community, where pianists and piano teachers of all ages can gather and engage online via posting and sharing of their work, completing creativity challenges, and learning new skills via activities designed by professional teaching artists. This online community will continue to be a year-round virtual space for people to engage in a supportive online environment between our summer festival program, which is returning in-person in 2024 and will now take place on the campus of Adamant Music School.