Teaching Philosophy

I want my students to develop the skills to make music they feel connected to. The music a student chooses to listen to can tell me something important about their curiosity, experiences, and artistic goals. I take those interests seriously and use them to help students develop as pianists and musicians. My role is to provide the technical foundation, listening skills, and musical understanding that allow them to turn an interest into an interpretation or a creative project of their own.

My work as a pianist, arranger, and researcher in video game music shapes this approach. Arranging requires me to listen for relationships among melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumental color, then decide how those relationships can be expressed at the piano. I see this process as a valuable opportunity for teaching. Students can explore how music works through decisions they make themselves: which voice to bring forward, how to support a melody, or how to suggest an orchestral texture with two hands. These questions connect creative work with the technical and interpretive skills involved in performing piano repertoire.

I want demonstration to give students a starting point for their own experimentation. By playing contrasting possibilities and explaining my choices, I can help students imagine an outcome and understand ways to pursue it. I would then invite them to change an element, listen to the result, and explain their preference. As their understanding develops, I aim to give them increasing responsibility for proposing and evaluating musical solutions.

This attention to listening also guides my approach to piano technique. I value control of tone, balance, articulation, and resonance because these abilities allow students to communicate their musical intentions. A desired sound gives technical work a purpose. Whether a student is shaping a phrase in classical repertoire or developing an arrangement of a favorite soundtrack, I want to help them connect what they hear internally with the physical and musical choices that produce it.

Respecting students’ interests also creates opportunities to broaden their experience. I can introduce repertoire, techniques, and musical contexts that connect with an existing curiosity and invite further exploration. My research encourages me to ask how timbre and context shape musical meaning, and I want to bring that habit of inquiry into lessons. Students’ questions and discoveries can contribute to the direction of our work together.

Ultimately, I want students to become increasingly capable of directing their own musical growth. Recordings, focused listening, and discussion can help them identify what they want to improve and evaluate whether a practice strategy is helping. I hold myself to the same reflective process: observing what students can do, examining the effectiveness of my guidance, and revising my approach. I hope students leave our work together with a stronger connection to music, the ability to make informed musical choices, and practical ways to continue learning.