Pianists of any age and skill level who have tried classical piano before and would like to continue (or try again) are welcome.

• Playing the piano is easy and doesn’t hurt
• A piano lesson is not necessarily a performance
• Solve technical problems in the repertoire you want to play
• Make leaps without seeming to move
• Learn how not to be enslaved to the notation
• Learn how to play fast while feeling unhurried
• Play double notes as fluently as single notes
• Resolve myths and old wives’ tales
• Slow practice? How slow? Why?
• What is a natural and efficient hand position?

Stannard has appeared often as soloist and collaborative pianist, performing in all 48 of the contiguous United States, across Canada and in many of the world's important concert centers from New York City to Moscow, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Hochschule and Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. He has also appeared in concert at state dinners in the White House and the State Department. He has participated in such festivals as Great Performers at Lincoln Center, the Berlin Festival, the Vienna Festival, Tage Neue Musik (Bonn), Marlboro and the Newport Festival.

Graduating cum laude from the University of Southern California, where he was a scholarship student, Stannard accepted a Naumberg instrumental scholarship (full) to the Juilliard School. Later, he studied piano on a German government grant at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, completed a doctorate at the University of Arizona and for 13 years taught graduate and undergraduate piano at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was a tenured professor.

Many of his former students are enjoying careers in the profession or have been accepted for further study at such institutions as The Eastman School of Music, The Manhattan School of Music and The University of Southern California. And many are simply enjoying the pleasures of understanding how to play the piano for themselves. He is a lifetime member of Pi Kappa Lambda, a national honorary music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the Music Teachers Association of California, Los Angeles branch, and the College Music Society.

Stannard’s principal teachers include Muriel Kerr, Jacob Gimpel and John Crown (Los Angeles), Gerhard Puchelt (Berlin) and Edna Golandsky (New York). He is well versed in Dorothy Taubman’s research on piano technique, which he learned from her and her associate, Edna Golandsky. He has used this approach in his own playing and teaching with considerable success for many years, adapting it to the particular needs of individual students.

Visit my blog at neilstannard.blogspot.com, where you will find articles and video demonstrations on solving specific technical problems in repertoire ranging from early intermediate to advanced levels.

CALL 323-982-1615 FOR A PRELIMINARY INTERVIEW. DURING THIS INTERVIEW YOU WILL BE INVITED TO PRESENT TECHNICAL OR MUSICAL ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION. THE INTERVIEW IS COMPLIMENTARY. (NSTANNARD@ATT.NET)