Purdy native to teach piano tuning in Africa with second Fulbright Scholarship
BY SHEILA HARRIS sheilaharrisads@gmail.com
As a result of a second Fulbright Scholarship, a Purdy native is preparing to bring some tune to Tunisia.
Jason Terry, a 2005 graduate of Purdy High School and the son of Steve and Mary Terry of Purdy, will soon begin his second venture abroad as a Fulbright Scholarship recipient — this time as a piano-tuning instructor at the Arab and Mediterranean Music Center in Tunisia. The North African nation, which lies along the Mediterranean coast, two countries west of Egypt, currently has access to only one piano tuner who must travel to Tunisia from France when the country’s pianos are in need of adjustment.
Playing and teaching piano – and, more recently, tuning the instrument — is Terry’s forte, evidenced by his doctorate in piano performance.
“I’ve played other instruments,” Terry said, “but I like the piano best.”
The piano is serving him well. When Terry was 8 years old, he began taking piano lessons with long-time Purdy piano teacher Ruth Burnside, who has taught some 250 students at various intervals over the past 34 years.
“Jason was a perfectionist and always came to his lessons well-prepared,” Burnside said. “I always remember those students, and have mentioned Jason, in particular, to my other students.”
Terry said, after a couple of years of lessons, Burnside pointed him in the direction of another teacher, who, she said, might be able to offer him more advanced instruction.
“I never did follow up with another teacher,” Terry said. “But, I kept right on playing the piano, mostly by ear, for the Signature Quartet.”
Playing keys for the gospel quartet influenced Terry’s decision to pursue a degree in music at Missouri Southern State University (Missouri Southern), in Joplin.
When Terry started piano instruction at Missouri Southern, the lessons were his first formal music training, after a several-year gap following lessons with Burnside.
“The first question my music professor asked me was how fast I could play scales and arpeggios,” Terry said. “All I could do was look at her and ask, ‘What?!’
“I didn’t really even know how to read music at the time.”
“I can tell we’re going to have to get the Ozarks out of your playing,” Terry’s instructor told him.
Terry’s visits to his childhood home in the Ozarks are now fewer than his parents might like, but God, he said, through his music, has opened doors Terry could never have foreseen.
After graduating from Missouri Southern in 2009, Terry attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he obtained Masters in Church Music Ministry and Music Education at the college/ university level. While there, he met his soon-to-be wife, Angela Yoon (now, Dr. Yoon), a renowned vocalist with a separate career path that now intersects periodically with his own.
“From the time I first saw and heard Angela performing on a stage at Baylor, I knew she was the woman I wanted to marry,” Terry said.
Although the couple are on different teaching trajectories, they manage to find points of overlap. A couple of years ago, they performed together at Carnegie Hall, and, every year, they teach at the Interlochen Center for The Arts in Interlochen, Mich., where some 4,000 students from about 66 countries are typically in attendance.
After Baylor, Terry obtained a doctorate in piano performance from the University of South Carolina.
Teaching positions followed, first as an adjunct professor at Indiana University, where Angela received her Doctorate in Voice.
From there, the couple’s paths diverged in an unconventional marriage held together by mutual support and respect.
“We once calculated that between the two of us, we’d lived in 11 states over a seven- year period,” Terry said.
After Indiana University, Terry taught full-time at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., then at Samford University, near Birmingham, Ala., where Angela was also hired. They currently both live and teach at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
“We actually get to live together now,” said Terry, who credits the development to God’s provision.
Travel, and not necessarily together, has played a major role in the couple’s joint life. Angela taught voice in Italy; Terry taught piano in Iraq. While overlaps are welcomed, they’re not always practical.
Terry credits his love of travel to his parents, who always took the family on a long trip to various parts of the country every summer.
“Travel has helped open my eyes to other cultures,” said Terry, who looks for grants and other funding opportunities to expand his horizons.
On his 2017 teaching/ performing trip to Iraq, Terry said he had the privilege of teaching students who, just 10 days before, had been liberated from Islamic State rule in Mosul, Iraq – where musical instruments had been banned.
“The experience was transformational for me,” Terry said. “I learned how powerful and healing music is from these students who had been deprived. It was so humbling. They were so eager to learn and play. Music was all they cared about.”
In the first part of 2024, Terry traveled to Cairo, Egypt, for several months, to teach and perform piano at the National Conservatory. The trip was the result of the first Fulbright Scholarship that he was awarded.
“I could see the Pyramids every time I stepped out of the conservatory,” he said.
Terry said after his trip to Egypt, he found his teaching to be much more graceful, or grace-filled.
“I learned that there was no place for assuming anything about the lives of my students,” he said. “As humans, we tend to think that most people are like us: similar backgrounds, perspectives, thought processes, etc. But I learned that isn’t the case. When a student comes to class, and it’s obvious that they didn’t practice, it’s not necessarily because they’re lazy or neglectful, but because they have problems in life that I’ve been unaware of.”
Terry said his first Fulbright Scholarship for his trip to Egypt was kept under wraps for security purposes.
“My family was even warned not to let the information out,” he said.
There’s no such admonition involved with his current plans to travel to Tunisia.
“This will be a different type of trip,” he said. “This is a Fulbright Specialist award, distinct from a scholarship for teaching and performing.”
In 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic, when life was put in a stall mode, Terry became interested in how the piano actually worked.
“I knew how to play it,” he said. “But, I had no idea what went on behind the keyboard, nor how to fix any problems that might develop.”
Terry decided to correct that situation.
He was approved for a grant which funded a 10-week apprenticeship with a piano tuner in Waco, Texas, where he learned the techniques of the trade.
“Practice is important and involves tuning, un-tuning, then re-tuning a piano,” he said.
Terry said the universities where he’s worked have been open to letting him ply his acquired skills on their instruments.
Now, he plans to ply them in Tunisia, while teaching would-be piano tuners the trade in a country where practitioners are in short supply.
The long-term goal for Terry’s Fulbright Specialist award is not only to provide the country with more piano tuners, but also to open up new employment opportunities for residents of Tunisia, perhaps even for those with disabilities, Terry said.
Called The U.S. Department of State’s flagship international education and exchange program, the Fulbright Program was instituted in 1946 for the purpose of increasing understanding and peaceful relations between people of the U.S. and other countries. The U.S. partners with more than 160 countries towards that goal.
“Fulbright Scholarships must be applied for, and the whole process of approval can take a year or more,” Terry said.
According to a Fulbright press release, Terry is one of over 400 U.S. citizens who share expertise with host institutions abroad through the Fulbright Specialist Program each year. Recipients of awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in their field, and their potential to foster longterm cooperation between institutions in the U.S. and abroad.
For Terry, the reward is the opening of his eyes to other cultures.
“Things are not always as they appear at first glance,” he said. “Living among other cultures gives me insight I might not otherwise gain.”
As a Fulbright Specialist, Terry will spend 40 days in Tunisia, broken up into two periods. Afterward, he will be on call for other Specialist opportunities through 2027, he said.
