Sometimes when Ester McNeil wakes up, she can hear her son’s measured notes coming from the living room on a piano identified, donated and delivered by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville staff and students.
“I was surprised to learn that we were getting a piano, and I was excited for him,” said Cahokia native Ester McNeil regarding her 14-year-old son Camaron Johnson, a piano student in the SIUE East St. Louis After School Performing Arts Program. “I was grateful to receive such a nice gift for him.”
When Mary Jo Pembrook, PhD, Performing Arts Program piano teacher, learned that an SIUE employee wanted to donate a piano, student Camaron Johnson immediately came to mind.
“Camaron is a serious music student,” Pembrook said. He took to the piano right away when he joined the SIUE East St. Louis Center Performing Arts Camp last summer – and has been practicing ever since.
“I can play the drums, but I started playing the piano because I wanted to try something new,” said Camaron Johnson, a seventh-grader at Estelle School of Choice in Cahokia. “I told my mother that I wanted to play the piano, and I would practice even more if I had one. “I feel good when I play. It relieves stress.”
Carol Dappert, graphic designer in University Marketing and Communications, and her wife, Mary Christine McMahon, donated their Baldwin Acrosonic piano from the 1940s to make more room in their home.
Members of the SIUE Wrestling team moved the piano to McNeil’s house in December 2017 in a moving truck and trailer provided by SIUE wrestling team alumnus Alan Grammer.
Providing the muscle for the move were SIUE Wrestling Coach Jeremy Spates, coach Eric Grajales and wrestlers Jacob Blaha, Tyshawn Williams and Christian Dulaney.
“It was a great SIUE effort to help one of our students,” said Pembrook. “I am delighted that Carol and Mary were eager to donate to a worthy student, and that the wrestlers were willing to help.”
The SIUE East St. Louis Center for the Performing Arts has a rich history. Legendary dancer, anthropologist, and social activist Katherine Dunham founded the Center for Performing Arts at the SIUE East St. Louis Center in 1967.
“The SIUE East St. Louis Center’s Performing Arts program has a decades-long legacy of providing transformational education experiences in music and dance,” said SIUE East St. Louis Center Executive Director Jesse Dixon. “When the SIUE community comes together for students in the Metro East – as it has in this case – there is no limit to the opportunities we can create for our youth.”
Johnson and his classmates are gearing up for their spring recital next Wednesday.
“I’d say he is still a beginner, but Mary Jo thinks he’s extremely talented,” McNeil said of her son. “He picks up notes fast. Besides sometimes in the mornings, I can hear Camaron playing in the evenings, He plays the new songs he’s learned, and the old ones, too. He enjoys it.”
He enjoys it so much that he’s factoring the instrument into his future.
“I think I might want to make playing the piano a career. I’m playing a solo, ‘Toccatina’ for our spring show.”
The SIUE East St. Louis After School Performing Arts Program will present its recital at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 25 in Dunham Hall. Students will perform on the piano, guitar and chimes. They will also perform West African drumming and dance, jazz, ballet and the Dunham technique. The recital is free and open to the public.
