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PIANO SLAM
PIANO SLAM is Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion’s educational program operating in up to a dozen Miami-Dade County Public Schools annually, serving middle and high school students. The program utilizes every student’s connection and love of music to develop language in arts-integrated learning models with a full STEAM approach that integrates piano duo concerts, in-school poetry workshops, science field trips, and academic concepts with creative writing and intensive spoken word performance coaching. The in-school services lead up to a districtwide poetry competition open to any student in M-DCPS, a competition that often leads to up to 1,000 submissions.​
Supported by a team of theatrical professionals and musicians, poetry competition finalists perform on the Knight Concert Hall stage for top prizes in a production co-presented by the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center. An independent evaluation by the FIU Community-Based Research Institute in 2020 found that Piano Slam competition finalists develop skills in creative written and oral expression and develop meaningful prosocial relationships and cultural engagement, while increasing their self-esteem, motivation, concentration, and hope for the future.
Recent Piano Slam competition themes include “Hot Music, Hot Miami” and “Rhythms & Writings of Restoration.” The 2025 theme is “Music of my past … Sounds of the future.” More than 105,000 students and 100 schools have participated in the Piano Slam poetry competition since the program’s inception.