My Teaching Philosophy

Simply put, music is the coolest thing ever.

Really. It’s the closest thing to actual magic I’ve ever experienced! I want to bring that experience to everyone. 

My cello lessons always involve encouragement, problem solving, and learning how to learn. Music lessons can be seen as a testing situation at best, and an adversarial one at worst. I want to change that paradigm; my students and I are on a team, and we are working together to achieve the same goal: to make beautiful music. 

As a cello instructor, I want to change the way we think about mistakes. So often, a student who has only been playing for a few weeks or months will make a mistake in a lesson and immediately say “sorry”. Why? They shouldn’t be sorry. Almost no one is good at something the first time they try it. Most people aren’t good at something the hundredth time they try it.

Playing an instrument requires fine motor skills and awareness of multiple actions at once; we are literally rewiring our brain when we develop dexterity. Mistakes are not something to be sorry for, but instead they should be an “aha!” moment; a weakness is revealed and we now have something on which to focus our practice.

If you’ve always wanted to begin cello lessons, now is the perfect time! Please reach out to me if you have any questions, and to schedule your first lesson! 

What are lessons like?

My lessons are structured exactly the way student practice should be structured.

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There are a host of strategies students can use when learning new techniques. I call these the “musical toolkit”. If the only tool available is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail. By having multiple tools at their disposal, students will be properly equipped to tackle any problem in the most practical and efficient way.

We will cover all sorts of musical topics, including theory, technique, philosophy, and expression. I always do my best to provide resources for all of these topics, and more, for students to explore outside of lessons.

I love questions!

I always open my lessons with “how was your practice this week? Do you have any questions?” and I close with a similar question: “do you have any questions about what we talked about today?”. If you don’t understand something, or if you forget, please tell me! I am here to help you. Learning is repetition.

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