Presto! It’s Music Magic Publishing creates curriculum, books, sheet music, arrangements, teaching aids, games, classroom materials, and other educational resources for music teachers and students. Founded by music educator Dr. Dennis Frayne, Presto! grew from decades of teaching, curriculum development, arranging, composing, and work with students and educators in studios, schools, classrooms, and ensembles.
Today, Presto! is part of a broader connected approach to music education. The Dennis Frayne Approach to Music Education provides the educational philosophy and teaching framework. The Dennis Frayne Association for Music Education supports teachers through membership, certification, coaching, publications, and professional community. The Dennis Frayne Ascent provides students with a lifelong framework for musical achievement and recognition. Presto! It’s Music Magic Publishing provides curriculum and practical resources that help bring these ideas into lessons, studios, classrooms, ensembles, and homes.
The complete Presto! It’s Music Magic curriculum is designed to work closely with the Dennis Frayne Approach, while many individual Presto! publications and resources can be used successfully by teachers working with a wide variety of curricula, methods, students, and educational settings.
Dr. Dennis Frayne, Ed.D., is a music educator, author, publisher, curriculum developer, composer, arranger, pianist, and educational leader. For more than four decades, he has taught students of many ages and levels in private lessons, classrooms, ensembles, community programs, and music schools while also mentoring teachers and developing educational programs and resources.
His work as an author and curriculum developer grew directly from that teaching. Through thousands of lessons, rehearsals, classes, performances, and conversations with students and teachers, he has continued asking how musical ideas can be introduced more clearly, sequenced more thoughtfully, connected more meaningfully, and adapted to the student in front of the teacher. Presto! It’s Music Magic grew from this continuing work and includes curriculum, books, sheet music, arrangements, teaching aids, games, and other resources designed to support active and comprehensive music learning.
Dr. Dennis Frayne is the founder of the Dennis Frayne Approach to Music Education, a connected and flexible framework for helping people become more musical; the Dennis Frayne Association for Music Education, a professional organization supporting the continued growth of music teachers; and the Dennis Frayne Ascent, a lifelong student achievement and recognition program built around comprehensive musicianship and meaningful Demonstrations of Learning. Together with Presto! It’s Music Magic Publishing, these initiatives bring educational philosophy, teacher development, curriculum, practical resources, and student growth into one connected body of work.
Dr. Dennis Frayne earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Arts from California State University, Long Beach, as well as a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from California State University, Fresno. His academic study has complemented a career spent continually teaching, learning, writing, creating curriculum, directing educational programs, and working alongside students and teachers.
Across all of this work is a simple conviction: music education should help people become musical and build lifelong relationships with music. Dr. Dennis Frayne continues to teach because teaching keeps educational ideas connected to real students, real teachers, and the everyday work of helping people grow through music.
Developed Through Real Teaching
Presto! It’s Music Magic did not begin as a publishing project looking for a classroom. It developed through years of teaching real students in private lessons, groups, classrooms, music schools, rehearsals, and performances. Ideas were tried, revised, expanded, simplified, reordered, and tried again as students responded to them.
The Dennis Frayne Music Studios continue to provide an active teaching environment in which curriculum and educational resources can be used, observed, evaluated, and improved. That connection between publishing and everyday teaching remains an important part of Presto! It’s Music Magic.
