Laymon’s Terms</h1> <article> <h1>Laymon’s Terms</h1> <p>tapplega — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 21:18:48 +0000</p> <span>Laymon’s Terms</span> <span><span>tapplega</span></span> <span><time datetime="2023-10-09T17:18:48-04:00" title="Monday, October 9, 2023 - 17:18">Mon, 10/09/2023 - 17:18</time> </span> <div class="text-content field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><div class="story"> <p>When Kiese Laymon looks back on his �鶹��Ƶ years, he does not mince words.</p> <p>“Being there, at a place that valued young Black artists, literally saved my life,” says the 1998 grad, an author and professor who was named a MacArthur Fellow last fall. At �鶹��Ƶ, Laymon immersed himself among creators who were making lively, inspiring art. He was also inspired by the discipline he saw in so many others around him there.</p> <p>“I remember in my first year, I was going for a run at 7 a.m. and I see this young kid—he looked 14—was coming out of his dorm room with a cello that was bigger than him,” he recalls. “And I asked him what he was doing up this early. He said, ‘Practice,’ and I immediately thought <em>Wow, the game has changed here. This is serious stuff</em>.”</p> <p>After earning a BA in English at �鶹��Ƶ, then an MFA at Indiana University, he went on to write two books—the novel <em>Long Division</em> and the essay collection <em>How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America</em>—both originally published in 2013. The story of time-traveling Mississippi teens, <em>Long Division</em> was optioned by comedian Trevor Noah to become a TV series and was the winner of the 53rd NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in the fiction category.</p> <p>In 2018, Laymon released <em>Heavy: An American Memoir</em>, an eloquent and raw coming-of-age story featuring unflinching insights into his issues with body image, violence, and gambling. In between these deep works, each of them examining the Black American experience through the lens of his Mississippi upbringing, Laymon also wrote for <em>Vanity Fair</em>, the <em>New York Times</em>, and ESPN.com, among other major outlets.</p> </div></div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-subhead field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Life has changed for �鶹��Ƶ’s newest MacArthur fellow. Now he’s changing the lives of others too.</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-type field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item">News Story</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden field__item"><time datetime="2023-06-20T12:00:00Z">Tue, 06/20/2023 - 12:00</time> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">David Silverberg</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=3724">�鶹��Ƶ Alumni Magazine</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pull-images field--type-list-string field--label-hidden field__item">Yes</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-cte-images field--type-list-string field--label-hidden field__item">Yes (Individual Images)</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pin-school-page field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">Off</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-photo-gallery-top field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">false</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-image-credit field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-media field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item"> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-flex-content field--type-entity-reference-revisions field--label-hidden vertical-spacing--basic field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <div id="obj-32106" class="paragraph paragraph--type--pb-el-bq paragraph--view-mode--default"> <blockquote class="blockquote--quotemark" data-text-color-red data-text-size-giant> <p>I’m now in a new tax bracket. I know things will shift for me in terms of writing about race and class, and I’m prepared to write about that change.</p> </blockquote> </div> </div> <div class="field__item"> <div id="obj-27816" class="paragraph paragraph--type--para-el-copy paragraph--view-mode--default o-flex--basic-copy basic-copy"> <p>Then in October 2022 Laymon learned that he had won an esteemed MacArthur Fellowship. He’ll receive $800,000, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years, with no strings attached. He is the 13th �鶹��Ƶ alumnus to be fêted with a so-called “Genius Grant,” and the first since musician Rhiannon Giddens in 2017.</p> <p>When he first got the call, six weeks before the official announcement, Laymon thought it was a joke perpetrated by his friend and fellow author, Reginald Dwayne Betts. “He once told me he’d prank me about getting a Genius Grant, so I thought it was him playing around with me. And it all didn’t really feel real until the announcement came out.”</p> <p>What Laymon plans to do with the prize isn’t confirmed, he says, but one cause he’ll continue to support is the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts, Food and Justice Initiative, which he founded and named after his grandmother.</p> <p>Headquartered at Jackson State University, the foundation offers free writing workshops to public school students who are mentored by students, faculty, and guests from the university’s creative writing program. Originally established at the University of Mississippi when Laymon was a member of the school’s English and creative writing faculty, the initiative relocated to his hometown in fall 2022—an announcement made shortly after the MacArthur news broke. (“My grandmama sent all her daughters to Jackson State,” he said at the time, noting the personal significance of the move.) The first group of student workshops are happening this summer.</p> <p>Laymon has taught at the University of Mississippi, Vassar College, and for the<br> past two-plus years at Rice University. Immersion in academia feels natural for him, in no small part because his mother taught political science for 35 years, retiring from Jackson State in 2007.</p> <p>“I wouldn’t be a professor without her,” he admits, “and she not only gave me a literary taste, because I was surrounded by books as a kid, but I have always admired her relationships with students. Sometimes, she would invite students to our place when they didn’t have a home to go to for Thanksgiving or Christmas.”</p> <p>Laymon even studied for a semester at Jackson State when his mother was still teaching on campus; he soon left “because she was all up in my business,” he says with a laugh.</p> <p>Change and revision have been at the heart of Laymon’s work recently, particularly in the reissued essay collection <em>How to Slowly Kill Yourself</em> and <em>Others in America</em>, which came about after he bought back the rights from his publisher. “Securing the rights to my books, revising them, and publishing them the way they want to be published are the most loving acts I could do for my work, my body, my Mississippi,” Laymon writes in the author’s note.</p> <p>Poignantly written with sharp takeaways on race and relationships, the new edition finds Laymon “[writing] from Mississippi about our current awakening,” he writes. “The movement of the essays is painted in regret and revelry.” His passion for hip-hop glows in one piece, while another pointedly suggests how he will “not allow American ideals of patriotism and masculinity to make me hard, abusive, generic, and brittle.”</p> <p>In a new opening essay set at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, Laymon deftly writes about how political and racial tensions in Mississippi are a microcosm of America itself. The piece weaves together multiple thematic threads: anxiety about the growing spread of coronavirus and concerns about keeping family members healthy; the removal of the Mississippi flag but the protection of Confederate monuments, both of which happen against a backdrop of national uprisings after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor; and the ways entrenched racism and violence perpetuate themselves throughout history.</p> <p>“Phantoms move at their own speed,” Laymon writes.</p> <p>In between teaching courses at Rice, Laymon is working on two new books, <em>Good God</em> and <em>City Summer, Country Summer</em>. He also plans to write about how his newfound wealth affects him. “I’m now in a new tax bracket,” he says.</p> <p>“I know things will shift for me in terms of writing about race and class, and I’m prepared to write about that change.”</p> <p>And what drew a young Laymon from Mississippi to �鶹��Ƶ? He had long been a fan of the late sociologist and author Calvin Hernton, who wrote the groundbreaking study <em>Sex and Racism in America</em> in 1965 and was a professor of African American studies at �鶹��Ƶ until his retirement in 1999. “He was brilliant and so kind to me,” Laymon says.</p> <p>Writing and editing became hobbies outside the classroom too. He was editor-in-chief at the literary magazine <em>Nommo</em> and worked for a time as opinions editor at the O<em>berlin Review</em>.</p> <p>“They were all so different and so challenging in a great way,” he remembers.</p> <p>It was also �鶹��Ƶ, he adds, that introduced him to two tasty treats he now loves: tofu and hummus. “I wasn’t a vegetarian until my first week at �鶹��Ƶ,” he says. “I’d been trying, but couldn’t give up fish. That first week, I gave it up. Haven’t had it since.”</p> </div> </div> <div class="field__item"> <div id="obj-27822" class="paragraph paragraph--type--para-el-copy paragraph--view-mode--default o-flex--basic-copy basic-copy"> <hr class="hr--light" style="margin-bottom: 1.25rem;"> <h2 style="margin-bottom: 1.25rem;">The Laymon Library</h2> <p></p> <h3 class="h4"><em>Long Division</em></h3> <div class="item-date">Simon & Schuster, 2013 (revised in 2020)</div> <p>A novel that blends elements of time travel and mystery, this coming-of-age story charts the world of two Black teens in the southern U.S., in search of themselves amid a flurry of expectations from family and society. It has been optioned by comedian Trevor Noah for a TV series.</p> <p>Learn more about Laymon’s <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Long-Division/Kiese-Laymon/9781982174828"><em>Long Division</em></a>.</p> <p style="clear: both;"> </p> <p></p> <h3 class="h4"><em>How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America</em></h3> <div class="item-date">Simon & Schuster, 2013 (revised in 2021)</div> <p>This incisive, poignant collection of essays includes letters to the author’s mother and uncle; a fictional presidential debate; observations on celebrity; and Laymon’s recognition of his own complicity in the misogynist treatment of Black women.</p> <p>Learn more about Laymon’s <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Slowly-Kill-Yourself-and-Others-in-America/Kiese-Laymon/9781982170820"><em>How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America</em></a>.</p> <p style="clear: both;"> </p> <p></p> <h3 class="h4"><em>Heavy: An American Memoir</em></h3> <div class="item-date">Simon & Schuster, 2018</div> <p>Laymon’s memoir explores his complicated relationship with his mother, as well as his struggles with eating, addiction, and gambling. Along the way, it touches on themes related to universal quests for truth, reconciliation, and love.</p> <p>Learn more about Laymon’s <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Heavy/Kiese-Laymon/9781501125669"><em>Heavy: An American Memoir</em></a>.</p> </div> </div> <div class="field__item"> <div id="obj-27823" class="paragraph paragraph--type--para-el-copy paragraph--view-mode--default o-flex--basic-copy basic-copy"> <p style="color:#454545">David Silverberg is a freelance writer based in Toronto. Additional reporting by Annie Zaleski.</p> <hr> <p><em>This story originally appeared in the <a href="https://www2.oberlin.edu/alummag/spring2023/">Spring 2023 issue</a> of the </em><a href="/news/oberlin-alumni-magazine">�鶹��Ƶ Alumni Magazine</a>.</p> </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>BLACK VOICES</h1> <p>swargo — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 20:32:46 +0000</p> <span>BLACK VOICES</span> <span><span>swargo</span></span> <span><time datetime="2021-07-19T16:32:46-04:00" title="Monday, July 19, 2021 - 16:32">Mon, 07/19/2021 - 16:32</time> </span> <div class="text-content field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Floyd, a 46-year-old Black father of two, was detained by Minneapolis police on suspicion of passing a counterfeit bill. Within 9 minutes and 29 seconds, he was dead on the pavement after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck while Floyd cried out for his deceased mother. The incident, captured on video, rallied people by the tens of thousands—in the United States and abroad—who risked contracting the coronavirus to march for racial justice. They shouted the names of other murdered Black men and women, and took a knee in their honor. They vowed not to forget this moment.</p> <p>For some, Floyd’s murder was a shock that raised awareness about injustices and the day-to-day racism that Black, brown, and other people of color face. Others did not need a reminder. </p> <p>A number of people in �鶹��Ƶ’s Black community—faculty, staff, and alumni—were invited to share their own experiences of racial injustice, outrage, the murder of George Floyd, the world’s response, and whether this moment will be different.</p> <p><a href="https://new.oberlin.edu/oam/black-voices/">Here are selections from their responses</a>.</p></div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-subhead field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Members of the �鶹��Ƶ community discuss racism and the murder of George Floyd</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-type field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item">News Story</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden field__item"><time datetime="2021-07-16T12:00:00Z">Fri, 07/16/2021 - 12:00</time> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Yvonne Gay and Marsha Lynn Bragg</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=3724">�鶹��Ƶ Alumni Magazine</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pin-school-page field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">Off</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-photo-gallery-top field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">false</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-image-credit field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Noa Denmon</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-media field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item"> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Home Township Hero</h1> <p>eburnett — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 16:42:11 +0000</p> <span>Home Township Hero</span> <span><span>eburnett</span></span> <span><time datetime="2021-06-21T12:42:11-04:00" title="Monday, June 21, 2021 - 12:42">Mon, 06/21/2021 - 12:42</time> </span> <div class="text-content field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>There are 12,116 parts that make up a Steinway grand, and beyond that, every piano has its own personality. The instrument presents myriad opportunities to sculpt the feel and sound for individual pianists or even for individual pieces. The distinctive training, time, experience, and mentorship it takes to be a Steinway-level technician is more akin to artistry than craft.</p> <p>Most pianists don’t have a command of what happens on the inside of a piano that makes it sing or sag. So it is the technician’s job to steer a pianist in the right direction—toward a particular instrument or in the adjustments made to one. Technicians at this level must have highly developed musical sensibilities and an incredibly discerning ear. They must establish trust with the pianists they work with—to hear the artists’ perspectives, then make decisions on how to coax the instrument to respond in the right ways.</p> <p>In 2014, �鶹��Ƶ launched the <a href="/piano-technology">Artist Diploma in Piano Technology</a>, developed in partnership with Steinway, to meet a need in the music world—and at �鶹��Ƶ. The conservatory’s collection of some 234 pianos had amounted to a mountain of annual maintenance. Pianos fill practice rooms, professors’ offices, and performance spaces across campus. Piano students, faculty, and a busy calendar of guest artists require pianos that not only sound good and are mechanically healthy but which are, in many situations, tailored to the specifications of particular performers and repertoire. While �鶹��Ƶ had been teaching introductory and intermediate piano technology classes to �鶹��Ƶ undergraduates for years, the students being trained weren’t capable of helping keep up with the demands of the conservatory’s pianists and instruments. The two-year program grew out of Steinway’s deep history with �鶹��Ƶ, which has been an “All-Steinway School” since 1877—the longest continuous relationship with Steinway of any institution in the world.</p> <p>The same year the piano tech diploma was launched, and 8,376 miles from �鶹��Ƶ, in the South African township of Soshanguve, a young man named Tshepiso Ledwaba experienced something of a revelation. The clarinet he played was damaged and needed repair, but there was no one in the area who could do it. Ledwaba picked the brain of a visiting juror for an international flute and clarinet competition taking place at the University of South Africa, or UNISA.</p> <p>“He told me I should learn to repair instruments,” Ledwaba recalls. “He said, ‘There is a need here!’ And it became suddenly obvious to me: <em>Do this.</em> Earn money!”</p> <p style="text-align: center;">/ / / / /</p> <p>Tshepiso (pronounced “tseh-PEE-soh”) Ledwaba was the first in his family to study music formally. His training began while he was a middle-school student with after-school programs run by UNISA, the country’s largest university. UNISA dedicates significant resources to community outreach, arts, and promotion of African culture, and its Community Music Foundation educates some 1,400 students between the ages of 2 and 23. Without this program, there would be no music instruction in Soshanguve, nor in four other townships in the Gauteng Province that UNISA serves. Like many community music programs across the world, its goals go beyond music training: UNISA envisions its efforts as a way to boost confidence in students and to provide positive alternatives for young people who face crime, drugs, and poverty in their everyday lives.</p> <p>South Africa’s townships today retain many characteristics they had under apartheid. Located on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas, they are marked by underdeveloped infrastructure and racial segregation. Though legal discrimination of this type was abolished in the early 1990s, the country’s long-held racist structures and related violence continue to plague its people of color. Lack of access to continuing education and vocational training, disproportionally high unemployment, and deep disparities of wealth still define these areas and exacerbate the country’s slow economic growth.</p> <p>Ledwaba’s neighborhood was built as part of the government’s Reconstruction and Development Project. RDP houses are one story and simply constructed out of cinderblock, some faced with stucco or brick. They are often flanked by informal settlements—areas with wood and corrugated metal dwellings.</p> <p>Ledwaba and his two siblings were raised in one of these small, four-room houses, surrounded by a “stop-nonsense wall”—a security barrier—that separates the hand-poured concrete front yard from the street. Two outside “boys rooms” were later built for Ledwaba and his older brother by their father, a now-retired painter and glazer. The home is sparely furnished, but has the essentials. In the heat of summer, a ceiling fan moves the air. There is space enough that Ledwaba’s mother ran a kindergarten out of the house for much of the time he was growing up.</p> <p>After finishing high school in 2008, Ledwaba earned his UNISA Music Teacher Accreditation. He started working for the university’s Community Music Foundation in 2010, tutoring students in music theory, clarinet, and recorder.</p> <p>At first, his parents were not supportive. “Music is only entertainment—not a job,” he remembers them saying. And though this was work he loved, it supplied a frustratingly low income, especially with the responsibility he felt toward his family. It simply was not enough.</p> <p>In 2016, Ledwaba was appointed project coordinator for Soshanguve’s community music program. He had also taken up the bass and played gigs with various pick-up groups. That year, he was introduced to <a href="/node/30191">John Cavanaugh</a>, �鶹��Ƶ’s executive director of keyboard technology and founder of the piano tech program, who was in Pretoria as the official technician for the 13th UNISA International Piano Competition, which Ledwaba served as a support staffer. He had no idea at the time of the changes that were to come.</p> <p style="text-align: center;">/ / / / /</p> <p>Ledwaba’s introduction to �鶹��Ƶ was already long in the making. In 2011, South African jazz saxophonist, music educator, and university administrator Karendra Devroop visited Ohio to talk about ideas for student exchanges between �鶹��Ƶ and South Africa’s North-West University, where Devroop was director of the music school and conservatory. During that visit, �鶹��Ƶ Professor of Economics <a href="/node/5506">Barbara Craig</a>, who had met Devroop in South Africa, put him in touch with John Cavanaugh.</p> <p>“John asked me ‘What’s the piano world like in South Africa?’” says Devroop. “I told him it’s actually very good, it’s very strong. We have world-class performers who have emanated from our country and gone on to international careers. However, we are not cultivating young technicians, and it’s a very big concern because the piano fraternity is growing.</p> <p>“John took no time and offered to come over during winter term and work for free.<br> It would be his way of ‘giving back.’ So I brought him to North-West University in Potchefstroom in 2013. I made the arrangements for him to work on our pianos for<br> two weeks.”</p> <p>Cavanaugh and <a href="/node/30111">Robert Murphy</a>, �鶹��Ƶ's associate director of piano technology, traveled to South Africa with five conservatory students who had taken Cavanaugh’s courses. They tuned “many, many pianos,” Cavanaugh says, as part of their winter term project.<br> <a href="/node/6686">Bobby Ferrazza</a>, director of �鶹��Ƶ’s <a href="/node/3231">Division of Jazz Studies</a>, was there at the same time with a group of �鶹��Ƶ jazz students, as was A.G. Miller, emeritus professor of religion. “It was A.G. Miller who suggested that if I were to look for a student to teach in �鶹��Ƶ, I should look for an African student to teach in order to help them get from under the thumb of apartheid,” says Cavanaugh.</p> <p>The connection Craig and Miller made between Devroop and Cavanaugh proved fortuitous.</p> <figure class="captioned-image obj-right"> <figcaption>With the action removed from the piano, John Cavanaugh (left) guides Tshepiso Ledwaba and two classmates in a hammer felt resurfacing technique using a sandpaper file. (photo by Julie Gulenko '15)</figcaption> </figure> <p>“In 2015, when I was taking on UNISA’s next international piano competition, I needed an official piano technician,” says Devroop. “New regulations and decreased funding at the university made it impossible for me to bring in the technicians from the Hamburg Steinway facility we had previously used, so I called John and asked for some ideas. He offered to come for the rate I could afford.”</p> <p>UNISA, like �鶹��Ƶ, is an All-Steinway School—the first institution on the African continent to earn the designation, bestowed by Steinway & Sons Hamburg in 2011. The university has presented international and national competitions for piano and other disciplines since 1982; �鶹��Ƶ piano alumnus and Steinway Artist <a href="https://www.spencermyer.com/">Spencer Myer ’00</a> took first prize at the 2004 competition, a credential that effectively launched his international performing career.</p> <p>“While John was in South Africa,” Devroop says, “we spoke again about the need to develop piano technicians so I was not always in this bind. That’s when he made another extraordinary offer.”</p> <p>Cavanaugh told Devroop that if he sent him a qualified student, he would personally take him under his wing at �鶹��Ƶ and teach him to be a fine piano technician. “The first person I thought of was Tshepiso.”</p> <p>Ledwaba had been a student and then tutor in the UNISA Community Music Project for about eight years when Devroop joined the administration and took over management of the outreach program in 2011.</p> <figure class="captioned-image obj-right"> <figcaption>“Tshepiso’s accomplishment is very important…That �鶹��Ƶ could intervene to help us in this way, to produce an expert of this kind, on pianos, and on the Steinway, I think is very important.”—Thabo Mbeki, Chancellor of UNISA and former President of South Africa (photo courtesy of UNISA)</figcaption> </figure> <p>“From day one that I met [Ledwaba], there was something unique about him,” says Devroop. “His personality is fantastic, but he is also the kind of person who is ever willing to assist. If there was a visiting ensemble to take care of or concert that needed to be set up, Tshepiso would be the first one to put his hand up and say, ‘I’ll be there.’ Because of his personality and his ability to work and to learn, I gave him as much responsibility as I could because he was such a reliable guy.”</p> <p>Cavanaugh and Devroop spent the next year wrangling institutional support and resources from �鶹��Ƶ and UNISA. The cost for this kind of study and travel was unimaginable for Ledwaba and his family. The two men also guided Ledwaba through contractual agreements with UNISA as well as the student visa process.</p> <p>“I knew that if I gave him the opportunity, he would make the most of it,” says Devroop.</p> <p>“Tshepiso is also such a humble person that, as a representative of UNISA, I knew he would be a good ambassador for our institution.” �鶹��Ƶ and UNISA collaborated to find ways to get Ledwaba the training he needed at �鶹��Ƶ, where he arrived in January 2018.</p> <p>“It was absolute culture shock,” Ledwaba remembers. “Everything about it. And it was cold. I had just left summer in South Africa, and even though John prepared me, Ohio is cold! But I was very excited to get to work. My classmates had already started in September, so I wanted to get in there,” he says with a laugh. </p> <p style="text-align: center;">/ / / / /</p> <p>With the piano technology program, Cavanaugh and Robert Murphy realized a vision and solved a workload problem. It addresses a need for technicians and provides more advanced training to students who are ready to pursue careers as artist technicians.</p> <p>Designed for a minimum of three students each year, the program has graduated 10 students thus far.</p> <p>“At �鶹��Ƶ, students certainly gain a complete understanding of voicing and touch,” Cavanaugh says. “They get a broad sense of how pianos really work, and they understand how the keys relate to the inside and the whole body of the piano.</p> <p>“More than that,” he adds, “they are learning to bridge the gap between piano technology and the concert pianist.”</p> <p>Cavanaugh brings pianists of all ranks and varieties—students, professionals, accomplished amateurs, faculty, guests, classical, jazz—into the shop on a regular basis so the students learn to hear and communicate clearly. “I teach them how to listen to an artist, interpret what they want, adjust the instrument to satisfy them, and then how to negotiate priorities when you can’t satisfy them.”</p> <p>The program is rigorous and hands-on. Classes are held every day in the piano shop. Students work on projects and practice skills on parts of pianos that are stationed across the space. They are assigned work throughout the conservatory’s piano collection for daily maintenance. They travel for special instruction and additional training and participate in summer internships and apprenticeships, also arranged by Cavanaugh.</p> <p>For two summers, Ledwaba worked at the renowned Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, under the leadership of its head of piano technology, Justin Holcomb. The festival produces 400 concerts in eight weeks—a trial by fire for technicians.</p> <p>Holcomb was impressed with Ledwaba’s skills and affable demeanor and immediately designated him head apprentice. During those summers, Ledwaba learned to tune pianos very quickly, knocking out six a day. He prepared the piano for a June 2019 performance by jazz great Gregory Porter. It was his favorite experience at Aspen.</p> <figure class="captioned-image obj-right"> <figcaption>“I’m a small boy amongst big giants. I’m privileged, honored, and humbled to even be able to take a pic with them, all because of piano tech,” says Ledwaba (center), flanked on the left by UNISA Vice Chancellor Mandla Makhanya and John Cavanaugh and on the right by Thabo Mbeki and Karendra Devroop. (photo courtesy of UNISA)</figcaption> </figure> <p>The culmination of all that �鶹��Ƶ piano tech students learn comes in the final semester, when they travel to the New York Steinway factory for a week of intensive scrutiny. Steinway has developed exams specifically and only for the �鶹��Ƶ Artist Diploma Program—an honor that involves preparing a grand piano, then receiving a final grade. Ledwaba traveled to New York for his exam in April 2019.</p> <p>“Tshepiso excelled in everything,” Cavanaugh says. “He got the highest score ever. He prepared a piano to factory standards—also put his own spin on it—and came up with a really nice instrument. The Steinway examiner called me immediately and said, ‘This guy is amazing.’”</p> <p>After 18 months of intensive instruction, two summer apprenticeships, and another semester of mentorship under his belt as an employee in �鶹��Ƶ’s piano workshop—during which Ledwaba completed training in belly work and woodworking skills, action regulation, restringing, tuning, and voicing—it was time to go home. His student visa was expiring, he was homesick for family and old friends, and with the next UNISA International Piano Competition about to commence, he was needed in South Africa.</p> <p>By the time Ledwaba returned, preparations for the 2020 UNISA competition were under way. Cavanaugh was there with him, tasked with installing a new set of hammers in a Hamburg Steinway concert grand, then setting up the piano to perform in an international competition. Ledwaba prepared a second Hamburg concert grand under his supervision and, says Cavanaugh, “He did an outstanding job.” They pulled 12-hour days to get things in shape, a rigorous schedule that Ledwaba embraced.</p> <p>“It was such an amazing and awesome privilege to be working with my mentor, teacher, American dad, and friend, John Cavanaugh,” he says of the experience.</p> <p>The competition’s opening events were attended by the university’s top administrators, as well as dignitaries, students, the competition’s 30 participants (including jazz pianist Michael Orenstein ’18), 10 distinguished international jury members representing the jazz and classical worlds, and Ledwaba’s family.</p> <p>Devroop lauded Cavanaugh and �鶹��Ƶ and the role they had played in Ledwaba’s education.</p> <p>“UNISA cannot thank you enough for filling this gap in our country. There are no words in my vocabulary to express how sincere our gratitude is to you.”</p> <p>Devroop also announced the establishment of the UNISA Piano Repair Centre, which would be housed on the Pretoria campus—and headed by Ledwaba. Ledwaba now begins a five-year contract with UNISA as one of the most highly trained and sought-after Steinway technicians in the world. He has received training at Steinway’s New York factory and is scheduled to receive training at its Hamburg factory. He also has been charged to teach three students, carrying the structure of �鶹��Ƶ’s piano technology program to South Africa.</p> <p>Cavanaugh was invited to address the audience and soon turned his remarks toward Ledwaba.</p> <p>“It was my pleasure to meet Tshepiso Ledwaba four years ago when I came here. Sometimes, I am interested in students because of their personality. It was very clear to me from the beginning that Tshepiso wanted to do this. The interest he had and the questions that he asked made me certain that, along with his training as a musician, he might be perfect for this. As it turns out, he is the best student I’ve ever had.”</p> <p>The hometown crowd erupted in a boisterous round of whistles and applause.</p> <p><em>Cathleen Partlow Strauss '84 is director of Conservatory Communications. This story originally appeared in the <a href="https://www2.oberlin.edu/alummag/spring2021/">spring 2021 issue</a> of the </em>�鶹��Ƶ Alumni Magazine<em>.</em></p></div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-subhead field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Tshepiso Ledwaba ’20 brought the talent to become a world-class piano tech. �鶹��Ƶ gave him the training.</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-type field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item">News Story</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden field__item"><time datetime="2021-06-21T12:00:00Z">Mon, 06/21/2021 - 12:00</time> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Cathleen Partlow Strauss '84</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2356">Conservatory</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=3724">�鶹��Ƶ Alumni Magazine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2974">Conservatory Alumni</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-programs field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?program=28901">Piano Technology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?program=29541">Piano</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-faculty field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/john-cavanaugh" hreflang="und">John Cavanaugh</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-departments field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/conservatory/divisions/keyboard-studies" hreflang="und">Keyboard Studies</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pin-school-page field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">Off</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-photo-gallery-top field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">false</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-image-credit field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">courtesy UNISA</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-media field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item"> </div> </article> </main></body></html>