Introducing Keith Knighton!

Owner and operator of the Well-Trained Singing School in Riverton, Keith Knighton has recently joined forces with Dan Whitley, director of the Notable Youth Foundation, in Draper, as a vocal instructor. Like Whitley, Knighton is a long-time music instructor who has dedicated is life to teaching children with folk music as a central part of his curriculum.

"Right now Dan is getting acquainted with me, and I am getting acquainted with him," Knighton said "I like very much what I see, and he likes what he sees in me. When I see what's happening here, I think oh my goodness, is this ever a good match."

Knighton considers his training at the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music in Kecskemét, Hungary, to be the beginning of his career in musical instruction, despite the fact that he already had a B.A. in Music from the University of Utah and a Masters in Music Education from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA.

Knighton is part of the first graduating class of the Kodaly Institute, and one of the few remaining people in the U.S. fortunate enough to study music education under the master teachers trained by Zoltán Kodály himself. "You go through that kind of an experience and you're hooked," Knighton said. He spent 37 years teaching the Kodaly method of music instruction in Massachusetts before retiring to Utah in 2003.

In 1969, just out of graduate school, Knighton was given the prestigious opportunity of attending the newly-formed Kodaly Institute, with the goal of bringing the Institute's teachings to the U.S. The Kodaly method integrates several music modalities, including the tonic solfa, hand signs, and rhythmic duration syllables.

"I just simply make things cognitive," Knighton explains. "But I don't make them cognitive until I know they understand it. In other words, I don't dump things all at once. Children hear things that they don't know cognitively. We make all this cognitive, we talk about form, and everything is labeled. Eventually they'll know what they're doing. I label the things that they hear, and then they become a master of it. I do it in such a way that he will understand it."

"For example, I can take one of Dan's students and teach them the musical elements so that when Dan begins to see the musical elements coming through, it's going to make his job so much easier. He'll be able to say "I want you to improvise on a Dorian scale, and he'll know what a Dorian scale is.' He'll say make it the form a-b-b-a but make the b part a ¼ higher, and he will know exactly what to do."

Knighton started the Well-Trained Singing School after his granddaughter, who was just four at the time, asked him to teach her the piano. He realized that she couldn't match tones or sing in tune, and he couldn't teach her to play the piano if she couldn't do those things. So he rented a room at Riverton Music and began the instruction that would prepare her to learn the piano.

He named the school, and places the emphasis for his teaching, on a motto of Zoltan Kodaly: "A well-trained ear, intelligence, heart and hand. All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong."

Knighton has been a presenter at the Massachusetts Music Educators Association All- State Conference. He is a former member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and his favorite hobby is singing with his 13 grandchildren.