Fresh Fingers: Piano Teacher Cate Larsen Bryan is Impacting Iowa
Written by Doug Goodnough
The era of Yellow Pages phone book advertising may be all but over; however, Cate Larsen Bryan, ’06, still lets her “fingers do the walking.” Playing and teaching piano isn’t just an interest or a career for the Iowa native, but a way of life.
Her grandparents put her in front of her first piano, and at the age of 5, she began formal training. After an accomplished playing career, including performing competitively, she currently is the only Steinway-verified teacher in the state of Iowa and has operated the Cate Bryan Piano Studio since 2010.
“I would say the average age right now is between 10 and 12,” Bryan said of her 50 or so students, who range in age from the very young to adult.
Teaching both in-person and virtually, she said the latter was magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I teach families in Idaho, Michigan, and Maryland,” she said. “And that actually started before COVID, so it was kind of good that I had that opportunity to be familiar with online platforms.”
She said paying attention to specific details is a key to teaching virtually.
“The camera has to be angled where I can see the students, their hands, the keyboard, and everything like that,” Bryan said of the preparation for an online lesson. “You have to be very precise about that. And then of course, you have to be extra clear and a little more patient, as I’m not the one handling their books. It just is a little different, but nothing too crazy.”
She said a typical in-person lesson begins with a short conversation, followed by sight reading.
“Sight reading, I found, has been helpful to transition from one previous activity that they rushed from. It kind of helps settle them down,” Bryan said. “So that way, we have a really profitable 30- or 45-minute lesson before they rush to the next activity.”
Although she has about a dozen or so students who train for competitions, Bryan said she tries to help the students learn at their own pace.
“The goal is to play it as accurately as you can, but not to judge yourself if there is a mistake,” she said. “You just let it be, experience it, and then let it go. We go through each of their pieces, and if we need to hang on to it for another week or two, we do.”
And Bryan is very good at what she does. In June 2023, she received the Iowa Music Teachers Association (IMTA) Distinguished Service Award. According to the IMTA, the award is given to someone who exemplifies extraordinary service. Bryan is currently the IMTA treasurer, and previously served as first vice president and state auditions chair. She also received the Steinway Top Teacher Award in 2022.
“I was very, very surprised to receive the award,” Bryan said of the IMTA honor. “At that time, I was the (IMTA) auditions chair, so putting the work in getting over 100 students scheduled to compete throughout the state was part of it.”
Bryan, who previously worked in Iowa political circles before opening her studio, recently aided the cause of fellow Iowa music teachers. When the state announced that it was requiring small business owners to report (and charge) sales tax, she reached out to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who was someone she knew from her previous career.
“I said, ‘We just received this rule change. This doesn’t sound like this is any scope of what you’re about,’” Bryan said of her phone call with Reynolds. “And (Reynolds) replied, ‘Absolutely not.’”
A week later, the rule was rescinded.
With the recent presidential caucuses in her home state, Bryan said it is not unusual to meet presidential candidates regularly, and she remains active in politics.
“I love politics. It’s like a family thing,” she said. “I think that if current presidential candidates would actually try to look at an issue on both sides and then find common ground, and also be prudent instead of being reactive, I think our life would be better here in America right now.”
She said she enjoys teaching students at all experience levels, and knows there are many more distractions now than when she was a young pianist.
“I have 11 students who are in that competition audition realm right now,” she said. “And there’s probably five or six others who could be there. But they’ve made the decision that they would rather pursue a sport, or pursue a different musical instrument, or something like that, where the time commitment for piano auditions just wouldn’t work in the schedule. My biggest sign of knowing that a student would be a great candidate for competition is when I hear things like, ‘My child will not make their bed because they’re too busy at the piano.’”
Bryan said she keeps sharp by playing at her church’s Wednesday evening contemplative service.
“I play a prelude piece for that every week,” she said. “That keeps my fingers fresh. And then I still dabble a little bit with composition.”
She is currently composing small works that incorporate Iowa towns, including her hometown (Sioux City), as well as Des Moines, which is near where she and her husband, Ben, ’06, currently reside.
Bryan said Liszt and Bach are her “go-to” composers when she wants to have a little bit of fun on the ivory.
Her grandparents, who were instrumental in Bryan’s passion for piano, were also the ones who brought her to the Hillsdale College campus for an admissions tour.
“I could actually visualize myself on the campus doing activities,” she said of the experience. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this is a good sign.’”
Locked in as a music major at Hillsdale, she was persuaded to double major in classical studies after studying Virgil.
In fact, she ended up performing her senior music recital as a junior because she wanted to focus on her Latin comprehensive finals during her senior year. At her recital, she decided to combine her majors a bit, taking text from Virgil’s Aeneid, translating it, and performing a composition.
“It was really special to be able to put both majors together,” Bryan said.
What was also special was meeting her future husband, Ben, at Hillsdale. They dated in college and married after graduating. Settling in Iowa after a brief stop in the Chicago area, the couple is now trying to finalize the adoption of an eight-year-old girl from Thailand.
“This has been our top priority right now,” said Bryan, who is anticipating completing the adoption process sometime in 2024.
The couple also adopts “rescue beagles,” and hopes to one day introduce their daughter to their latest rescue, named Dusty Rose.
“And she is actually a studio dog,” Bryan said. “A good portion of the students expect to have the dog greet them and welcome them to the studio every week. So that’s pretty cool.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in January 2024