By Yesica Gonzalez I Staff Writer I

Students from different college campuses gathered together to bring the wonderful world of Piano Day to life.

On the evening of Sunday, May 22, students from Cal State Long Beach, Pasadena City College and Cal State San Bernardino came to show their talent on classical music from different countries.

This year’s theme was focused on the works by German, Italian, Czech and Russian composers.

Students showed in various ways how that the piano is incorporated in many aspects of music.

The assembly of Piano Day at Long Beach started under Dr. Sam Shun-Lin Chou who was followed by Dr. Jocelyn Chang in 2014 and brought it to Pasadena City College.

This year, Dr. Valentina Wen-Ting Huang the Director of Keyboard Studies in the music department, brought the event to Cal State San Bernardino.

“It’s an event that celebrates piano in many ways, piano collaboration, piano with a singer, piano with instruments and piano with duets, we want to dedicate the day to piano,” Huang shared.

Ever since last fall, the date was set for the event to happen.

But it wasn’t until the beginning of this quarter that the event started to come together.

“This is the first year we created a theme, in the past was just piano day in general,” Huang said.

Piano Day takes place annually on each campus that the students are from and performed by the piano students in the music department.

The next Piano Day is taking place on Saturday, June 3, at Pasadena.

The flyers, program designs and slide shows that were shown at the event were all designed by students.

“We want to present our students’ talent even if they’re not music majors,” Huang shared, “These students want to do sound engineering…music is only part of their careers but they are multitalented and want to present their work as well.”

Despite not being music majors, helping out with making flyers helps the students gain experience and that there is more talent to be shown.

Huang expressed how grateful she was for the students that participated with their talent at the event.

“There are so many talents and without their help, it’s not possible to do it,” Huang said.

A few works that the students played were by well-known composers such as Anton Arensky, Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Rachmaninoff and so on.

The last piano piece that was played was Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 Two Pianos Eight Hands or what can also be known as “The Graduation March.”

It was performed by four students at Piano Day and written by the English composer Edward Elgar in the year 1901.

Not only is Piano Day for students on campus but for the whole community that can also be a part of.

“We want to reach to the community and let them know that Cal State University has a music department that presents good music programs of high quality,” Huang shared.