20 STUDENTS TEAM UP FOR MONSTER CONCERT

It is difficult enough for a piano teacher to get a student's two hands moving in tandem. Try 40 hands. That was the scenario at Saturday night's Monster Piano Concert at the A.C. Brase Arena Building.

Ten pianos arrayed on the floor were played by 20 students at a time, in duets that ranged in difficulty from "Home on the Range" to Schubert's "Military March." More than 200 music students, most of them pianists from as far away as Dexter and Patton, performed in the fund raiser for the Encore Music Club, an organization of music educators. Their 24 music teachers served as conductors.

A flute choir and vocal choir also performed. The pianos, electronic Clavinovas, were donated by Shivelbine's music store.

The students trooped into the Arena Building throughout Saturday afternoon to rehearse. Two of them were John Kipper, 11, of Franklin School and Behram Shah, 9, a Clippard student. They teamed to play "Backpack Blues" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever."John, son of Bonnie and Paul Dipper, has been playing for three years. He practices half an hour "once a day or once every other day."Behram, son of Naureen Latif and Tariq Shah, practices five days a week for 30 or 40 minutes at a time. "When I'm busy I don't practice and when I'm not busy I do practice," he said, bringing a grimace to the face of his nearby piano teacher, Becky Fulgham.

Getting her son to practice is a struggle that requires "a combination of encouragement and threats," said Cathy Schroeder, whose son, Alex, attends Louis J. Schultz School.

The encouragement is that he'll get more enjoyment out of playing the more he practices. The threat is the old standby: He can't go out and play unless he practices. "I guess that's a threat," she said.

But Alex has been playing the piano for six years and was allowed to quit after sixth grade. He chose not to even though he also is learning the saxophone. He spends 30 minutes a day practicing the saxophone and 20 minutes a day on the piano, his mother said. Schroeder, who studied piano for 10 years as a child, sings in the Westminster Presbyterian Church choir and also in a gospel quartet. Piano lessons do pay off for adults, she said."When you understand music it makes it more enjoyable," she said. "And you're able to help your children and teach them some things about music."George Sparzynski said there's never been any trouble getting his daughter, Carrie, to practice the flute. Now a 10th-grader at Jackson High School, she practices every day.