Got Beginners?
March 13, 2026
10 a.m. to Noon
Lacefield Music
2171 Bluestone Dr.
St. Charles, MO 63303
Wanda Kuntz and Karen Koch
Got Beginners?
PTRT members and former presidents Wanda Kuntz and Karen Koch will share ideas for beginner students. Wanda will discuss the Wilbeck Beginner Game that she has used with great success. Karen will bring “Try a Beginner Piano Boot Camp: Why and How.” Come prepared for exciting ideas to get those new students successfully started.
Karen Koch has taught several hundred piano students, ages 7 to adult over her career. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Knox College in modern languages, with a strong emphasis in applied piano and accompanying. Later, as the mother of three, while growing a large teaching studio in Trenton, Illinois, and serving as a church organist and choir director, she completed a master’s degree in piano performance and pedagogy at Webster University. She is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music by the Music Teachers National Association, and has always been an active learner, contributor and officer in professional teaching organizations in Illinois and Missouri, including serving as a past president and program chairman of PTRT. In addition to private piano teaching, she has taught Montessori preschool music, elementary public school music, and as adjunct faculty at Greenville College, Southwestern Illinois College, Kaskaskia Community College, and McKendree University. Her teachers have included Dr. Murray Baylor, Dr. Dwight Drexler and Dr. Daniel Schene.
Based on her thesis topic at Webster University, she created My Own Music History, a comprehensive, hands-on curriculum to provide accessible knowledge of music history for students. In 1991, she organized a cooperative organization, Music Educators’ Marketplace, for which she traveled nationally to conferences to demonstrate and sell carefully curated hands-on teaching aids. She still serves in an active consulting role with Keys to Imagination, with which she merged her business in 2017. A resident of Kirkwood as of 2019, she has a soft spot for teaching beginners of all ages while participating in the lives of her children and five grandchildren, doing some freelance writing, facilitating a history and civics book club, and singing alto in her Kirkwood church choir.
Wanda Kennedy-Kuntz, is a member and past president of PTRT, and a member of SLAMTA. She has resided in the St. Louis area throughout her life, and holds a Master of Music degree (double major in performance and pedagogy) from Webster University. Growing up in Maplewood, Wanda attended the St. Louis Institute of Music and worked in her parents’ music store and music school. She authored the book Kennedy Music, reflecting upon her formative musical experiences and several generations of her musical family. Wanda has composed and recorded original Christian music, and loves participating in community musical theatre. Currently she directs music at Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Creve Coeur, and has a thriving piano teaching studio. Wanda is grateful to both PTRT and SLAMTA for many friends and colleagues. We share the immense privilege of learning from our students, and from one another, the art of teaching and of making music at the piano.