About + Contact

After majoring in music at Smith College, post-grad study at the Guildhall School of Music and graduate study at New England Conservatory, I moved to Philadelphia where I formed The Philadelphia Piano Duo with my friend Claire Belkovsky. We had a flurry of performances at East Coast venues during the early 80′s (note my big hair) which we booked the old fashioned way, through mailings, phone calls and offline networking.

They were fun carefree days but the clock was ticking on the “family” issue.

In the 90s life took a turn and I was working at home, teaching piano both privately and online (via email!) with students as far away as Kuwait and Turkey. I used Microsoft FrontPage for creating websites (and then selling them). I even managed to write a screenplay (or three) – one of which went on to be a contest finalist – all this while helping to keep three kids well stocked with Lego, video games, and plenty of milk and cereal.

In 2005 I took my teaching out of the house and opened The Music Studio starting out with 55 students and nerves of steel. I tried my hand at grant writing and was awarded funding from the Lackawanna County Arts Council to present avant-garde improvisation performances as well as more traditional salon concerts at my cozy music studio. It was during this time – with three teens at home and a studio full of Millenniums – that I found my teaching philosophy evolving away from the rigor of traditional pedagogy toward something I simply started calling “Go Play.” I blogged about it on AllPiano and wrote this e-book.

I was surrounded by music but couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I had to get back on the piano bench myself. Inspired by an supportive online community of musicians and music educators and a whole lot of enthusiastic students, I made a decision start my own “Go Play Project.”

By performing and recording one piece a week and posting it online, not only have I rediscovered my love of piano repertoire and the pleasure of simply playing the piano, but I found a world of musicians exchanging and enjoying and talking about music of every genre.