About Me

Background: I started playing piano at the age of 3, playing a Christmas carol in front of my church congregation. At 5, I started formal training. I have had 14 years of piano lessons, 12 of which were from a wonderful teacher, Lilia Wilson, an elegant lady who, at the time Castro took power, escaped from Cuba, married an American CIA agent, and settled down to a quiet life in a small town in Iowa. Now deceased, she herself was taught by the world famous Chilean pianist, Claudio Arrau. To read about Arrau, see: http://www.princeton.edu/~gpmenos/biography.html. I'm told that my tutorial lineage goes back through Arrau all the way to Liszt. Piano runs in our family, and my brother is a Suzuki piano teacher. For about 5 years in my teens I was the church pianist. In college I continued with my lessons under another teacher, and then in graduate school I sang and played in a band to help put myself through school. I spent a year in Germany after that, where I taught piano and English and played in various bands and ensembles. Since then, I have taught off and on for about 20 years. I am also an artist and an English teacher with an M.A. in English Literature.

Method: What I usually do is interview students (you or your child) and see what they have done and what they want to do. If children are shy, then I talk to the parents together with them. Then I go from there, constructing a plan for their individual needs and interests.  Sometimes I incorporate some Suzuki books and methods in my teaching, among other methods.  Although there are some strategies that work for quite a few students, I have a flexible style of teaching as opposed to just one method, because in my experience, people have different learning styles and respond to different techniques. I think that teaching piano, or teaching anything really, involves a delicate combination of imparting one's own knowledge/ experience to students and empowering them to find their own way. If students need guidance with books, I have some favorite classic books that are "old friends" for me, but if they already have books and want to continue with them, I easily adapt my teaching strategies to whatever books are available.
As a child, I was motivated by my love for particular composers, melodies, motifs, emotions evoked by major or minor keys, hand positions and movements that felt like dancing, and even visually pleasing and familiar book covers and images. Playing in bands, recitals and various social occasions has also energized me, offering chances to share my music with friends, relatives, and the general public . Because of my own experience, I like to find in individual students whatever it is that sparks their own love affair with music. Helping the student to tap into music's natural charm is the foundation of my method.

Rates: My rates are reasonable and negotiable. Lessons are about 30 minutes or so, but I'm not that strict about the time unless I get really busy. My location is in the Irish Channel in New Orleans, but I sometimes conduct lessons in the students' homes. As far as availability, I have openings on most weekdays after 2 pm, depending on your location, and on weekends, I am flexible.

"And you know it's like in old notions of growth and development there was always this idea, as Noel Hanlon, a poet friend of mine says, you know, in a poem about her daughter, "Like me you needed something to push against" — that somehow we needed something to push against in order to grow. Now there is almost a feeling like as that growth should be delivered to us. And I think that from the way you state it is that it's a recognition. That there is this dialectic there, that around us the forces are not kind in terms of either recognizing, awakening, or encouraging beauty, but that actually, they should be the impetus and spark to do it. Now how do we do it?

One way, and I think this is a really lovely way, and I think it's an interesting question to ask one self too, you know? And the question is when is the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn't just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation, in which you over heard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew. That you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plane. And then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards, you know? And I've — I've had some of them recently, and it's just absolutely amazing, like, as we would say at home, they are food and drink for the soul, you know? "

John O'Donohue

Ms. Tippett: And where is — where is beauty in that?

Mr. O'Donohue: Where beauty is — I think is beauty — beauty isn't all about just nice, loveliness like. Beauty is about more rounded substantial becoming. And I think when we cross a new threshold that if we cross worthily, what we do is we heal that patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere. And in our crossing then we cross on to new ground where we just don't repeat what we've been through in the last place we were. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.

"Music," John O'Donohue said, "is what language would love to be if it could."