About My Teaching

Every student is an individual, and so our musical time together is a unique exploration of ideas and discoveries. I like to use many different method books, matching the books to each student. My goal is to make music a lifelong process, and to this end I emphasize musical literacy, including note reading and theory, because I believe that when students can read well, they can discover new works that will allow them to keep up a long term interest.

But some students read better than others, so I try to bring out each pupil's strength. One way I do this is to have three recitals a year. These occur at Halloween (a fun recital), end of the year, and a spring recital in which I hand out their annual performance certificates. I use a system of stickers as reinforcement, but always hope that the pleasure of making music will be its own reward! I try to encourage composition, especially for the Halloween recital.

Even though I have been teaching over 40 years, and students have come and gone, I have individual and personal memories of nearly all of them. I think that is because the curriculum I devise is individual, and oftentimes I associate a particular piece with a student who probably has forgotten this link. I love working with students of all ages. I have had students who were 4 at their first lesson, and other students who were over 80. I fully believe it is never to late to start music.

I often think of the silly maxim: "The family that plays together stays together". This is certainly true of music, and I am particularly proud of my family musicians: father-daughter pairs, sibling pairs and mother/children groups. My goal is lifetime music-making. When students graduate from high school I hope this is just the beginning of their love-affair with music!