How PPI’s Tholen Fellowship is the piano version of “passing the baton”
Photo: Tholen Fellows + PPI Team + Master Teachers
Dear friends of PPI,
If you read our newsletter from two weeks ago (access it here if you missed it!), you’ll know that we’re continuously thinking about the value of expert guidance and the essential role of teachers on the journey to becoming a better pianist. It only took watching a middle-school cross-country relay against the mental backdrop of the PPI team’s coordinating and executing another super-charged weekend with the Tholen Fellows in Portland to shift my lens to the undeniable parallels between endurance training – and living the piano life. If lifelong learning of the piano is like running a relay, then PPI’s Tholen Fellowship really belongs up there with the best running clubs in the state and, dare we say, the country!
A good running club is built on recognizing the importance and necessity of community and accountability, while also building strength and endurance at a unique, individual pace. Similarly, PPI’s Tholen Fellowship – to our knowledge, the only such program in the US – was built from the conviction that every good piano teacher deserves a regular workout, clear goal setting and a pack to be accountable to!
Named in honor of the Oregon piano legend Nellie Tholen, who taught piano in Portland for over 62 years and inspired countless Pacific Northwest musicians (her estate still also sustains programs at Lewis and Clark College and the Oregon Music Teacher’s Association), PPI’s Tholen Fellowship takes a thoroughly unique approach to the mid-career doldrums one inevitably encounters in a pursuit as isolating as piano teaching.
Teachers who feel stalled in their own pianistic development, long for camaraderie, are burnt out on the same method books and elementary pedagogic tricks and wish for growth, inspiration and uplifting need to look no further than the Tholen Fellowship to radically shift their perspective. A place among the rotating cohort of twelve Tholen Fellows guarantees six full weekend sessions in Portland (spread over two or three years), including private lessons with one of our Master Teachers, collaborative listening and playing, and exposure to myriad opportunities for engaging and learning with piano-minded peers. Each candidate sets their own unique goals, and each Master Teacher adapts the curriculum to achieve the participant’s tailor-made milestones. Want to master a concerto, not only teach it? Memorize a sonata, not only lecture about it? Lose the performance anxiety you’re urging your students to ditch? Then the Tholen Fellowship is for you!
On completion of the program, Tholen Fellows overwhelmingly report a renewed appreciation for and conviction in their own abilities – and go on to build and inspire a next generation of players in what we consider the most meaningful “passing of the baton” that ever existed.
Here’s to our current Tholen Faculty, Chad Bowles, Anthony Padilla and Tatiana Ioudenitch, for their tireless commitment to improving piano playing in Oregon!
Photo (L-R): Anthony Padilla, Paul Safar, Anne Denese and Chad Bowles
Here’s to the graduates from this past session, Anna Danese of Newberg and Paul Safar of Eugene, for achieving their goals and dreaming big!
A warm welcome to new Tholens this session, Kim Chen and Addison DeSantis, of Portland.
And our fondest PPI wishes to the existing cohort Nicholas Fontana, Harriet Wong, Timothy Nickel, Anna Christina Streletz, Melissa Terrall, Dorianne Wright, Rory Stitt and Joshua Hegg. Thank you for staying the course!
Want to join the pack? We have space for one new Tholen Fellow starting in March of 2027! Apply here.
We’re also inviting all our friends to mark their calendars for Thursday, November 5, 2026 and Friday, November 6, 2026, when Tholen Faculty Chad Bowles will be teaching and performing at PSU as part of the School of Music and Theater’s Steinway Piano Series.