HOLOS Piano Collective is on the move!
For the first time in the UTEP Keyboard Area’s history, piano majors and members of the student-led organization HOLOS Piano Collective will become active members of the National, State and Regional professional organizations uniting piano pedagogues and performers throughout the nation.
The Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), the Texas Music Teachers Association (TMTA), and the El Paso Music Teachers Association (EPMTA) are in tandem consortiums providing piano instructors and their students, development in the art of performing and teaching. Although the UTEP Department of Music has had strong ties to these entities in the past, these relationships are about to become even stronger. UTEP students, under the umbrella of their student organization “HOLOS,” will become members of all three.
“Although there are innumerable benefits for being a member of these organizations – such as teacher certification, health insurance, and continuing education for evolving trends in the field – I think the best gifts are the sense of community, peer connections, and forums for performance,” states UTEP HOLOS President Lauren Martinez.
Ms. Martinez grew up in the city of El Paso studying piano with Ms. Diane Morrow, a long-standing member of the EPMTA, TMTA and MTNA. After participating in numerous events sponsored by the local piano teacher guild, Lauren also attended the TMTA State Conference to experience the next level of mentorship. Now within her final year of study at UTEP and working on the Master of Music in Piano Performance degree, she is an affiliate member of all three associations as a piano teacher, businesswoman herself. Along with the support of her UTEP piano professors, she is spearheading the opportunities for her collegiate contemporaries to develop as teachers and performers, just as she did. She states,
“We have exciting things planned to join the two groups together, including bringing the EPMTA members onto campus, where they will hold their business meeting in the UTEP Department of Music’s Faculty Conference Room. Indeed, our HOLOS piano students will be observing that meeting first-handedly and in person to learn from these amazing pre-collegiate piano teachers here in El Paso. UTEP Piano Majors will also volunteer as runners for the Fall Theory Tests, which offer music theory exams to young, upcoming pianists learning how to construct music. I’m hopeful that once my UTEP colleagues see the benefits, they will sign their own students up for recitals at the El Paso Zoo or in costume for the Halloween Recital at the Sunland Park Mall. One of our strong objectives is to have HOLOS members attend the annual summer conference to see that next level of dedication to our art, and hopefully motivate UTEP Piano Majors to initiate their own collegiate chapter with other universities across the United States.”
For more information on these organizations, please visit: