East Bay piano teacher uses competition to inspire students
An East Bay woman has inspired a love of music for more than three decades through a competition that's drawn young people from around the world.
Lamae Loo is this week's CBS News Bay Area ICON Award winner.
For her the piano is a place of creativity and expression.
"Especially when you are alone, sad, you just sit at the piano, you pour your heart and that just takes care of everything," she said.
But in 70 years of teaching piano, she found motivating young students can be challenging.
"The students who do classical music, they don't want to do too much. 'Ah, I'm tired of this piece.' 'I can't do it.' But if they go for a competition, it's completely different," she described.
And when Loo tried to enter students in competitions years ago, she encountered some unexpected dissonance.
"Usually there are so many restrictions so the students do not get anything out of it. Like the teacher can only send in 3 students," she noted.
So she helped launch the US Open Music Competition in 1992 to open access to more young musicians.
"We had 400 the first year without any advertisement," she smiled.
Today, Loo organizes the annual President's Day Week contest.
It draws more than 2,700 students a year from all over the Bay Area and world to a large church in the Oakland hills.
Top winners get a medal and scholarship ranging from 50 to 300 dollars a prize, plus, a chance to perform in a special concert.
Loo says participants fine-tune skills and expand their classical repertoire.
Jonathan Tsao says competing years ago taught him how to perform under pressure..
In addition, as his piano teacher, Loo nurtured his talent as a composer.
So he's even written music for the competition's sight reading category.
"She certainly shaped me as a musician and composer," Tsao said. "She's really passed on her love and passion for music to generations of students."
Some past competitors have gone on to music careers and return to adjudicate the contest.
Like Fantee Jones, who is a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Jone shares what she's learned. "If you win, great. Your life moves on. If you lose, your life also moves on. This is a very valuable lesson that's not just in music."
Loo, who has served as President of the US Open Music Competition since 2014, is now training Jones to take over her duties in organizing the annual contest.
Reflecting on the scale of the competition's impact brings Loo joy beyond measure.
"I see that they become mature musicians and human beings," she beamed.
So for inspiring thousands of students to pour their hearts into music.. through the US Open Music Competition, this week's CBS News Bay Area ICON Award goes to Lamae Loo.
