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Biography
I didn't always love piano. I remember sitting on
the piano bench in our dining room as a young girl,
wailing at the injustice, while my mother called out
"Tennnnnnn Mooooooooore Minutes!!" from the kitchen.
I fell in love with piano as young teen and a few
years later I began composing music.
In 1997 I graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio
State University where I studied piano, music
theory, and composition. I was granted The Ohio
State University Excellence in the Arts Award.
While at OSU I was research assistant to Ellie
Hisama, Ph.D., and assisted her in her work on
Gendering Musical Modernism, published by
Cambridge University Press.
I began teaching in 1996, and continued when I moved
to Northern Virginia to work for MENC: The National
Association for Music Education. While at MENC I was
a contributing editor of Exploring Careers In
Music, Spotlight on Early Childhood Music Education,
and the journals Teaching Music and Music Educator's
Journal. In 2002, I left MENC to open my studio
and teach full time.
How I Teach
It is important to me that lessons are upbeat,
positive, and well-paced. I am teaching a piano
and/or composition lesson, but I am also helping to
cultivate a love and appreciation for music, the
arts, and creativity.
I use the Faber and Faber Piano Adventures series,
and supplement with other pieces - classical, jazz,
and music from great Broadway musicals.
Theory, ear training, composition, and more recently
singing and pitch matching – I’ve found this helps
the students make the piano "sing"—are important
components of our lessons.
The iPod/mp3 player has proven to be a wonderful new
tool. I use a recorder that works with my iPod to
record students playing during the lesson. I then
let them listen to and critique their own playing –
which really helps them to "be their own teacher"
when they are practicing at home.
Mp3 technology is also great because it is more
practical for me to recommend individual pieces for
students to listen to. It is so much easier to
download an mp3 file of an important piece for 99
cents than it is to drive to a music store to buy an
entire CD for $19.99.
There will be one recital per year, and one smaller
performance at a local retirement home.
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