BACKGROUND
Like many musicians, I was born into a very musical family and started classical training in the Royal Conservatory when I was young, the practical performance side and the theories, harmonies and histories. I am very thankful to be fluent in the written tradition of Western music.
When I hit my teen years, I got bitten by the jazz bug and started listening to the likes of Diana Krall and Frank Sinatra. A whole world opened up to me with the promise of improvisation, spontaneity and most of all, more musical choices! For the first time, instead of looking at a sheet of music and having to faithfully decode and reproduce it, I was being invited into a language with a grammar of its own, where I had to make a lot more musical decisions and know where they will lead the song. It has been enough to wake up the musical mad scientist within, and I continue to plunge deeper into the heart of this jazz-language.
QUALIFICATIONS and EXPERIENCE
This impulsion led me to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts at York University where I specialized in jazz piano and vocals. I am very thankful for my time there studying with world-class musicians, such as Mark Eisenman, Sundar Viswanathan, Kelly Jefferson, and participating in masterclasses with Dave Holland and Chris Potter.
I’ve been teaching private piano and vocal lessons for many years now, encouraging my students to work with whatever type of music moves them. I am very determined to help them improve their general physical use, technique and breathing to a point where they have more physical possibilities in their voice/instrument than before. That’s what excites me. This is why I am immersed in the Alexander Technique to become a teacher of it, and this is why I continue to study the Taubman Approach to healthy virtuosic piano technique: our bodies are capable of so much when we work with them and not against them. It’s the uncluttered pure aliveness out of which we get the purest sound. So this is what I work to uncover in myself and in my students.
In the last 3 years I’ve also been giving group lessons in Yamaha’s research-based Junior Music Course. I’m very passionate about applying what we know about excellent and efficient practice to my own work at the piano, and bringing the same methods to my students’ work. You’re here, you’re taking lessons, you’re practicing – great – now let’s use the principles that world athlete’s and champions are using!
I regularly help students prepare for auditions. I have helped students get ready for auditions for Etobicoke School of the Arts, Father John Redmond, St. Michael’s Choir School, and various musicals. My work as a collaborative pianist (accompanist) has given me much more to offer my students because I’ve been a part of many audition and interview situations from the inside.