Ms. Costales is hitting the notes of success

Last year during class registration, something may have caught your attention; something new…perhaps it was a piano course. Like many students, you may have felt a bit skeptical about signing up for it. Will this be a hard class? Does Kalani even have pianos? Where will we learn how to play? Well, your questions have been answered.

Piano is taught by the one and only Ms. Costales, who has been playing the piano since she was just four years old. “I’ve had three teachers. First I studied with Ruth Eisen on Maui for about three to four years. Then I moved to Rosie Johnson who taught me to be an accompanist as well as a solo pianist. Finally I studied with Bichuan Li at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for six years.” As we now know, Ms. Costales has quite the piano experience; however, she has never taught a piano class before, but has been teaching private lessons for eight years now. “It is difficult teaching a big class because I’m unable to give one-on-one help like I would in private lessons.” Despite the struggle, Ms. Costales is doing a wonderful job so far.

Her class is located in C-11 and has been in session for about four to five weeks now, and the piano students have learned so much already, from appropriate playing form to notes and articulation to the history of the piano. But there’s still so much more to learn, especially with the upcoming recitals.

The students really enjoy this class and appreciate the amicable learning environment. So piano is definitely a class to consider next year, and I promise you it isn’t as hard as it seems. “Anyone can learn if they’re willing to put in the effort” a helpful piece of advice from Ms. Costales. She would also sure hope to see more Kalani students in her future classes as well as a lot of attendees at the recitals, so stay tuned.