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In my studio, I have many ambitious and competitive students and parents who naturally aspire to enter competitions and win prizes. This leads to the important question: Who gets to …

My biggest gripe with piano teaching is not what you’d expect – students who don’t practice. It is the parents.  For the most part, I have wonderful parents: they are …

Many, many years ago, when I was still in the first ten years of my teaching career, I was successful. I was able to attract good students, where good meant …

Many parents, after looking at my website or after the initial meeting where we discuss piano lesson details and the student plays for me, comment that they like that I …

A common complaint of many students is that they never play as well at their lesson as they do at home. They are frustrated but at the same time seem …

For as long as I can remember, I have been improvising and composing at the piano. A few weeks after I started lessons, my fourth grade class listened to Mussorgsky’s …

You’ve heard it a million times.  “We need the arts because …” and then come all kinds of good reasons.  For instance, Yehudi Menuhin said in an interview with the …

My schedule in the summer is wildly irregular. Not only does it change from day to day but also from week to week. Which sounds stressful but I actually enjoy …

Around the middle of February, I decided to join 31 other Kansas State University piano faculty, students, alumni and guests, preparing a performance of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, to …

As a piano teacher I meet all kinds of students, families, parents. Fortunately, I have mostly a lot of simply normal parents in the studio: parents who are supportive, who …