You might think this Taiwanese child prodigy was glued to the ivory keys because they were the love of her life.
Just the opposite: “Until I got to college, I hated playing the piano!”
Why?
“I wasn’t doing it for myself, I was doing it to be the best in my class. More than anything I wanted to impress and please the people around me. I just didn’t enjoy playing the instrument.” Metaphorically, she had nailed herself to the cross of perfection.
Today, her outlook is transformed. She plays and practices because she wants to, not because she has to.
With her first year of teaching under her belt at Humboldt State, Dr. Ching-Ming Cheng thoroughly enjoys performing and gave her first concert this spring in the Music Department’s Faculty Artist Series. She received a standing ovation from the Fulkerson Recital Hall audience.
In the classroom, her rookie year was both a charm and a challenge. She found her faculty colleagues unusually supportive, models of the Humboldt State tradition of treating everyone, even newcomers, like family. She prizes the Music Department’s culture and heartily seconds the avowal of Interim Chair Eugene Novotney: “I have been given total artistic freedom here; as a musician, that is all you can hope for your whole life!”
Ching-Ming puts it this way: “I feel I can be myself here. This is only my first year, but I feel I can do what I want and know that I will have the support I need.”
She hailed a number of colleagues by name. “I received tremendous help and encouragement from Deborah Clasquin, the professor of piano, who gave me extra opportunities in the piano area right from the start last fall,” she said in an interview. “And Cindy Moyer, the professor in charge of theory, helped me with ear training to teach that course.”
When fire struck the Old Music Building second semester, Ching-Ming felt homeless—she lost her office for two weeks—but her teaching wasn’t disrupted because Ken Ayoob, ex-Music Chair and Interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, swooped into action and produced a new schedule overnight. “I was really surprised and very impressed,” she recalled.
What was more, the fire proved to be a boon. Faculty “refugees” gathered between classes in the Music conference room. Suddenly they had time for more than “Hi, how are you?” and could share real conversations. A renewed spirit of camaraderie arose, reinforced by fellow professors who readily made their intact offices available to their stranded counterparts. Adversity reinforced the department’s solidarity.
Ching-Ming taught piano privately for many years, but found the group settings in the University an entirely different experience. The American classroom and the Taiwanese classroom are a world apart. American students are noisy, Taiwanese students obedient, she says. Her HSU undergraduates challenged her teaching style and she moved with alacrity to adjust.
She had not taught piano literature—music history—and she was cast into the deep end on that score, too. Although her doctoral studies at the University of Miami prepared her to be a piano professor, she discovered through her teaching at HSU that learning is a never-ending journey. “There is a lot of preparation in teaching, especially history, and I felt like I was also a student who had to study and research constantly to give a full-hour presentation every week,” she said.
Ching-Ming is looking forward to her next recital and to next semester, when she plans to push her charges “to be pianists rather than piano students.” Her hard won self-confidence will be an asset on both counts. When she plays now, she shares the music with people instead of trying to impress them. Though she still regards stage fright as every musician’s biggest challenge—“when you step on the stage you just never know what’s going to happen”—Ching-Ming recognizes she is in the concert hall to be heard and enjoyed, not criticized.
The feeling is mutual. “I’ve changed my mentality to enjoy the performance. I had a good time in Fulkerson!” she exclaims with a smile.