New Frontiers
A former student of Dr. Cisler’s, Angela (Suing) Wright, was the first UNK student to complete the Piano Pedagogy program, which Dr. Cisler developed.
“In 1999, I not only graduated with a B.A. in music education, I was also the first student to complete the Piano Pedagogy program,” Wright said. “The program dev-eloped my knowledge in teaching piano and has helped me become a qualified piano teacher.”
Earlier in her career, Wright almost gave up playing the piano.
“I had developed a technique in playing piano that was incorrect and had caused serious problems with my wrists and fore-arms,” she said. The hours spent practic-ing were causing the numbness and pain.
“Discovering this was devastating to me, as I did not want to give up playing piano or my dream of teaching music,” she said. In the fall of 1995, Wright began studying piano with Dr. Cisler.
“She worked with me in great depth on ‘re-learning’ how to play the piano. She had me work on a large number of technique exercises. Some of these exer-cises were from various technique books. Others were exercises written by Dr. Cisler, many of which are now published in Technique for the Advancing Pianist,” she said. “Through it all, Dr. Cisler was always positive and reassuring that I would work through this and be able to play more difficult pieces better than I could before.”
In November of 1998, Wright success-fully performed a Senior Piano Recital consisting of six major works by compos-ers from Bach to Muczynski.
“To this day, when I play piano, I do not experience any of the problems I had during my freshman year in college,” she said. “I credit this to Dr. Cisler and her patience and wisdom in teaching me how to play with correct piano technique.”
