Carolyn Shaak Honored with DAMTA Lifetime Achievement Award
Denver Area Music Teachers Association
Presents Carolyn Shaak with its first ever Lifetime Achievement Award
“It isn’t just that she has become a nationally revered teacher. It isn’t just that over the past six decades she has trained a veritable army of highly skilled pianists, many of whom have gone on to become remarkable teachers in their own right. It isn’t just the joy she has given, or the lives she has changed. It’s that the end result of all her work is a community, a community of musicians, a community committed to beauty, bound by joy.”
– David House, President of DAMTA
Honoring Carolyn Shaak
For sixty years Carolyn has been doing that right here in Denver, Colorado. Showing students that the pursuit of excellence is not some furrow-browed virtue- heavy endeavor, but an opportunity for joy and delight. Together with her husband Bernie and her daughter Jamie, she has produced an awesome library of material, method books, technique books, piano games, duets, arrangements, and original compositions, which has come to be internationally revered by teachers and students alike because they are both effective and enjoyable.
At a time in life when she would have every right to kick off her shoes, read novels and sip Manhattans on a terrace in the Bahamas, she continues to teach a full studio of students who must count themselves as among the luckiest around. If this was where it ended, it would be more than enough for her to merit the Lifetime Achievement Award we will be giving her. But it doesn’t end here… Read full speech by David House, President of DAMTA
Beginning Piano Method, Technique Books and Original Compositions by Carolyn Shaak
Carolyn Shaak is an accomplished pianist, composer and beloved music teacher to hundreds of piano students and is known for her interactive games and activities for group piano lessons. She is the co-creator of The Shaak Technique Book and the one-of-a-kind musical game, The Bean Bag Game. She founded Shaak Piano Music with her late husband, Bernard Shaak, and together they created the Shaak Piano Beginning Method and the original Piano Partners, I Love Coffee I Love Tea and Events for Piano. These beloved books have been tried, tested, enjoyed and appreciated by thousands of students and their teachers for years and have been the first piano books for many beginner pianists.
Learn more about the Shaak Piano Music History and Philosophy.
