Published: June 27, 2008 02:14 pm      

NOTE WORTHY | JSO's lead pianist learned at mom's knee

BY RUTH RICE

RRICE@TRIBDEM.COM

Beth Good of Hollsopple is a key player.

She has been a member of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra since 1979 and its principal pianist since 1998.

Good grew up in Davidsville, and hardly remembers a time when she didn’t play the piano.

“I began piano lessons with my mother when I was 3 or 4,” Good said. “I never thought about playing in the symphony then, but I am grateful for the symphony.”

The amount of time Good gets to perform with fellow symphony members depends on whether the repertoire includes a part for the piano.

“This past season I played more – three or four concerts,” Good said. “I also play the harpsichord if it’s called for.”

Good also uses the piano to synthesize the celesta, an instrument that gets its name from its celestial, bell-like sound which provides the distinctive music for the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Good also is educational outreach co-chair for the symphony’s Opera Festival and has played in the orchestra for musicals at Mountain Playhouse in Jennerstown from 1984-2001.

Good is surrounded by music with the symphony and in her job as choral music director with Westmont Hilltop High School.

She started her teaching career as choral and general music teacher at Conemaugh Township Area elementary schools from 1979-85.

Good worked in choral and general music at Westmont Hilltop Middle School from 1985-92, before taking the reins as choral music director, musical producer and music director in 1992.

She had a brief spin instructing elementary education majors in music as an adjunct faculty member at Pitt-Johnstown from 1987-91.

Good has been awarded numerous honors for her teaching skills.

She was designated a nationally registered music educator by Music Educators National Conference in 1991, received the Arts and Letters Award at the YWCA Tribute to Women in 2003, was named Johnstown’s Best Teacher of 2006 by Johnstown Magazine and was featured as the Pennsylvania Choral Director of Note in the January 2007 issue of Choral Director Magazine.

When she isn’t directing others vocally, Good sings soprano with her husband, Mark Weakland, and Kristen and Nathan Santos and Douglas Wilkin in the vocal jazz quintet White Noise, which has performed with the symphony and Jazz in Your Face Big Band as well as the Johnstown Chamber Music Series.

“I’m interested in jazz,” Good said.

“I’d like to start a vocal jazz group at Westmont.”

Good also would like to explore more of jazz instrumentally and try to break out of her classical training.

“I’m not as skilled at improvisation,” Good said.

“It’s important to explore, to keep expanding. In music, I think we have more than several lifetimes to explore.”

When not surrounded by music, Good is surrounded by nature.

On their 30-acre farm near Hollsopple, Good and Weakland have devoted eight acres to a grassland for ground-nesting birds such as bobolinks and meadow larks.

“We want to attract them,” Good said. “We just put in the grassland a couple years ago.”

An avid birder, Good said there are tons of hummingbirds on the grounds, attracted by the gardens and feeders she and Weakland have provided.

“We have 20 nesting pairs this year,” she said. “We’ve dedicated our efforts to the birds.

“It’s a good thing we’re teachers so we can work on it in the summer,” Good said.

Weakland is an educational consultant for Intermediate Unit 28 in Indiana.

Good said she is a major fan of reptiles and amphibians, studying the frogs and snakes on her property.

“They’re fascinating, different creatures,” she said. “They’re endangered, so we want to provide them a habitat.”

Good also is toying with the idea of becoming a beekeeper.

“My father, Virgil Good, is a beekeeper,” Good said. “I get my love of gardening and the outdoors from my parents.”

A devoted organic gardener interested in the environment, Good grows her own vegetables and fruit.

“We don’t market our food,” Good said. “We grow it for ourselves.

“When I retire, I might grow commercially. I fantasize about it.”

Good would like to combine her love of music and nature by teaching her students at Westmont how to identify birds by their songs without seeing them.

“We have a flexblock on Fridays that students can sign up for, where teachers choose what they want to teach,” Good said.

“I co-taught a class on acting this spring, and I did some Renaissance music. It’s refreshing to have something new to focus on.”

She and Weakland also are restoring the 100-year-old farmhouse on their property.

“It takes a lot of work,” Good said.

“I don’t know if it will ever be complete. We want to restore as much as we can while getting it up to current standards.

“Our next project is insulation.”



Beth Good

Position: Principal pianist for Johnstown Symphony Orchestra.

Residence: 30-acre farm near Hollsopple.

Education: 1971 graduate of Conemaugh Township Area High School, Davidsville; received a bachelor’s degree in music education, majoring in piano and voice, from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1976; received a master’s degree in music education with an emphasis on world music and African music from Kent State University in 1992.

Employment: Choral music director, musical producer and music director at Westmont Hilltop High School.

Family: Husband, Mark Weakland, and three cats.