PIANO LESSONS FOR ALL AGES
With Emma Stephenson
I am an Australian songwriter, pianist and piano teacher. I was trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a jazz pianist, and I am soon to receive my PhD in research on the implementation of healthy piano technique during jazz improvisation. After performing my original music at the Sydney Opera House in 2017, I was awarded the Freedman Fellowship for Australian jazz musicians under the age of 35. While residing in New York City from July 2017 to March 2020, I recorded my second studio album, ‘I Wrote You a Song’ featuring six guest vocalists, performed live piano karaoke and request shows at some of New York’s most famous piano bars, and nurtured the talents of forty piano students.
Thanks for considering me as you or your child’s piano teacher. If we work together, I promise to attend to you or your child’s musical development with compassion, joy and patience. As my previous six day teaching schedule in New York City would suggest, I truly love to teach and have a bounty of experience with students of all ages, levels and interests to draw upon.
For adults and older children I will accommodate and adapt according to individual learning styles, goals, experience and musical taste. Whether the student is playing music for leisure or with career aspirations, and whatever style of music they would like to play and/or compose, I guarantee a highly personalised and considered approach for each person.
For children between the ages of 5 and 8, I keep lessons play-based and creative, unless requested otherwise by the parents. My lessons with young children always involve the use of pictures, colors, stickers, motivational games, imagination, and storytelling. My goal at that stage of the journey is to help the child to associate music and piano playing with positive emotions, hopefully creating a somewhat addictive experience that will fuel future motivation and encourage persistent practice as they grow older and become more capable of self-directed learning. For these younger students, I also have a YouTube channel: Piano With Miss Emma, dedicated to sharing my tips for teaching and learning the piano, including games and activities that parents with no experience can use to get their child acquainted with the piano at an early age.
I am now taking in-person students at my home in Thornleigh NSW, while continuing to offer online lessons to students who prefer to take lessons from the comfort of their own homes. During the pandemic restrictions I developed some systems for online teaching that I have found to work really well for my students. For students over the age of 7, I find that online lessons are generally equally as effective as in-person lessons, and often much more convenient. For younger students, it depends a lot on the child’s personality and the setup at home, but often the in-person interaction is crucial for maintaining engagement and effective communication.
Please email pianowithmissemma@gmail.com for more information.