Teaching Philosophy

As performers, one of our ultimate enemies is fear. Fear works its way into tension, physically and mentally, and will negatively affect our technique, sound, timing, and even memory. In classical music education, I believe much of our pedagogy has come from a place of fear—the belief that there are right ways and wrong ways to approach musical situations—rather than a place of love and celebration. I have heard several fellow students say things like “nothing ever feels right,” or “no matter how I play it, it’s always wrong.” So many students are afraid to be truly spontaneous and creative, and this has stemmed from us as teachers propagating a mindset in which there are rights and wrongs in performance. As a teacher I address this fear by giving my students the information they need to make historically informed interpretive choices, yet I encourage them to break free and nurture their own artistic voices. In addition to celebrating the traditions of the past, I push my students into uncharted artistic terrain to support their personal creative growth and passion for the art.

In many of my past lessons as a student, as well as when I read pedagogic texts from the last century, I get the sense that much of collegiate music education has rested on the rather objective practice of preserving the right and wrong ways to do something. For instance, many of us have heard things like “Chopin wouldn’t have started that trill on the lower note,” “Rachmaninov would never have used that kind of tone in this passage,” “You must play on your fingertips!” These types of statements, while perhaps noble in nature, have always caused me inner conflict. I believe that these statements come primarily from a place of respect to the art. They serve to protect the pieces we know and love from being chipped away at by the passage of time. By preserving these rights and wrongs, we believe that we are upholding the traditions of the great artists of the past. However, I often wonder, while we think we are protecting these pieces, are we in fact limiting the same creative spirit that brought them into existence? Did Chopin really care which note of the trill he started on in the creative fervor of improvising a new Nocturne? While I firmly believe in the importance of studying the performance practices of the composers that we perform, I ultimately believe that this study is only to go as far as to teach us how to break the rules. Simply preserving these “dos and don’ts” will only result in correct and polished playing. Yet music is too passionate to rest on being just correct and polished, and the mentality of worrying over whether one is doing something correctly or incorrectly will never result in a confident and inspiring performance. Thus, the so-called rules of music must be learned, and then relegated to the background so a true and unimpeded synthesis may emerge.

While giving my students the knowledge they need to play music of the established canon, I also encourage them to explore uncharted musical territory. This is primarily done through the practices of interpreting music left out of the canon, composing, and improvisation. All three of these practices help us as musicians to find a deeper understanding of underlying musical mechanics, in turn fomenting our individual artistry. All three, whether they are approached as exercises or in performance, demand a higher level of musical thought and contribute to richer and more deeply felt interpretations in performance. Ultimately, challenging my students in these ways confronts them with their own creative potential and encourages them to become true artists, rather than mere performers.

As a teacher, I strive to continuously empower my students as well as give them a true fascination and love for our multifaceted art form. Now more than ever, we need passionate artists to communicate the power and depth innate to music. The only way in which we can ultimately inspire our audiences is to let go of fear and to realize the nature of our art as exploration.