Teaching Philosophy

To that end, helping students develop an intrinsic motivation built upon a love for music and excitement to share it with others is a priority. Lessons aim at preparing classical repertoire for performance by giving students the tools they need to be both knowledgable (regarding the background of their repertoire, technical skills, theory, and performance traditions and practice) and independent (able to practice effectively, develop mature expressivity, individual tastes, and aptitude in convincing and individual score interpretation). 

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Beginner students are taught using the Piano Adventures curriculum, an effective and engaging curriculum with tailored paths for young children, older children, and adults. In time, this curriculum is supplemented with other technical and musical resources (ex. Fingerpower, Junior Hanon/Hanon, sight-reading, Czerny, Keith Snell repertoire books, Alfred anthologies, etc.).  For late intermediate to advanced students studying unabridged repertoire, urtext/critical scholarly editions of Baroque to Romantic works are used (ex. Henle, NBA, Chopin National, EMB, Wiener Urtext, etc.).

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All students are given a well-rounded musical education including the following:

• Performance opportunities (student recitals twice yearly, at no cost)

• Varied and diverse classical repertoire (Baroque-21st Century)

• Practicing principles of virtuosic technique from the start (including technical exercises)

• Music listening to encourage the development of a robust musical intuition

• Learning principles of score interpretation

• Theory exercises as appropriate