REGISTRATION STARTS FOR UNIVERSITY'S ADULT PIANO CLASSES

Adult piano classes are being offered this semester on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University.

Registration continues through Jan. 14.

The group classes are available through the Music Preparatory Program, a non-profit organization offering music instruction to precollege and adult students.

The course is designed for beginners with little or no previous training. It will meet on Tuesday evenings from Jan. 21 through May 5. Jeanne Tjaden, formerly with the Cape Girardeau public schools, will teach the class in the electronic piano laboratory.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for adults in the area wanting to learn to play the piano for the first time," said Becky Fulgham, Music Preparatory Program director. "The program also is excellent in helping those adults who took piano instruction in their youth and now would like to hone those skills."

The class is given without grades, tests or credit, Tjaden said.

"I find the class just delightful," she said. "They (the students) really are enjoying it, too. Many of them are finding some new skills they never had before, and some are renewing techniques they had learned as children.

"I think the class is just a wonderful thing for them to fill the private moments in their lives with the joy of playing the piano. It is a wonderful activity for them. It makes them think and makes them do something that isn't the ordinary."

Enrollment also is under way for the Music Preparatory Program's precollege division for youths in first grade through high school. Instruction is being offered on all band and orchestra instruments, piano, organ, voice and guitar.

For more information, contact Fulgham at 651-2378.