06/23/2026
Father's Day was Sunday. But it stayed with me, so I want to share something.
I was raised by two fathers, and between the two of them they taught me almost everything I know about music. They did it in completely different ways, and what I learned from them is what I try to give your kids at the bench.
The first is my Papa, Roman Belloso. He grew up in Mexico, came to this country, and taught himself guitar: mariachi, singing, writing his own songs. The first time I ever wanted to play an instrument, it was because Papa did. Piano Belloso actually began with guitar!
Papa loved everyone, openly. The warmth came right off of him. His smile, his laugh, the way he delighted in people. It was infectious. He'd do impressions of animals and instruments for the sheer joy of it. He could turn himself into a trumpet, a guitar, a whole drum kit, until the whole room was grinning with him. And he was a real teacher, better than he knew: patient, endlessly curious about how things worked, and full of genuine surprise and joy whenever I learned something new. I think about it every time a student of mine gets something for the first time.
Papa is the reason I don't only play music. I make it. He passed away suddenly in 2022, and I still miss him in a way that catches me off guard. But I carry him into every song I write, and into every lesson I teach.
The second is my Dad, Steve, my stepfather, the man I came to call Dad. He'll tell you to this day that he's "not musical." He's wrong. Music was always on in our house. He sang. He remembered every artist and every lyric. He set the rhythm of ordinary family life to a soundtrack and never once called himself a musician for it.
Dad is the foundation. He was the present one, the parent who dealt with me every single day. Food on the table, working overtime, driving me to the hospital when I was a sick kid, paying the doctor bills, teaching me to ride a bike. The realities of most families, and it was mine. When I started lessons he was the steady one. The cheerleader, the one who helped me build the discipline to keep going. He never pressured me to "make something" of music, and never made me feel a life in music was the wrong choice. He's a gifted mechanic. His love language is fixing things: looking at your whole life, spotting what you need, and taking care of it before you ask.
Right around my 21st birthday, my senior year at the University of Kansas, I played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto with the university orchestra. The birthday timing was a coincidence. The senior performance just landed near it. Big night either way. And here's how my two fathers showed up.
Papa, the long-distance father, the one I'd only see now and then, flew across the country to be in that room. He was there, in person, for the big moment. My mom came too, with my brother and my grandmother.
Dad couldn't make the concert. He was working, and he couldn't get enough time off to travel out. That's the everyday father, the one whose love so often looks like the work that keeps the whole life standing. A few months later, after I finished at KU that December, he and my mom drove out together to give me a car, a gift for both my 21st birthday and my graduation. He'd bought a used Acura that needed real work to be reliable, and he put that work in, and then some. He detailed it inside and out, put a shine on it, then drove it across the country to hand to me, because I needed a car. He didn't fly. He literally drove the extra miles.
Sit with that turn. One father crossed the country to be present in the room. The other held down the work that made the whole life possible, and when the moment was right, drove out the gift he'd built with his own hands. Presence and provision. Two completely different ways of saying the same four words: I'm proud of you.
And that car taught me something Dad already knew. Details are everything. Music had taught me that one way: your brain learns it note by note, the small things are the whole thing. Dad taught me the same truth with his hands: you take care of the details because that's what care looks like.
I've taught piano long enough now to see this everywhere. A musician, really a child of any kind, is almost never made by one single kind of love. The spark comes from one place. The foundation comes from another. Both are sacred. You need the one who lights the fire and the one who keeps it fed.
And in a lot of families today, that fatherhood role gets filled by someone who isn't the textbook picture of a dad: a grandfather, a mentor, an uncle, a coach, a father figure who simply showed up. That counts. Fully. Sometimes the spark and the foundation come from the same person, a single father, a single mother carrying both alone. I see you.
So today, think about your own heritage. The spark and the foundation in your life, if you had them. Who lit your fire. Who kept it fed. Maybe one person did both. Maybe two people who never met. Maybe they're here, or maybe you carry them with you now.
And if you didn't have both, or either, here's why Piano Belloso Music exists. Partly to help fill that gap for a kid at the keyboard. And partly to help you, the parents and the grown students, keep building your own character (your patience, your steadiness, your curiosity) so that you can become the spark and the foundation for the kids coming up behind you. That's how we change the world. That's why I'm here.
Happy Father's Day. Celebrate it again today for whoever lit your fire, and remember it every day for whoever keeps it fueled and fed. 🎹
— Ian
05/25/2026
05/10/2026