But never underestimate the power of piano as a long-range significant impact on your child’s life. A lot of my students know my story, my primary instrument is the trumpet. I’ve studied the trumpet and played the trumpet for over 39 years now. I did take piano lessons for maybe a year when I was about 7 years old. I did not like it. Full disclosure, that likely had little to do with me, I’m quite convinced that I had a teacher that just wasn’t good and that has shaped how we teach as an academy greatly.

At the same time, while I did drop piano after about a year, the reality is that piano eventually drew me back in. As a young aspiring jazz musician in high school, I began to really deeply need to learn how to play chords so that I could understand what we call chord scale theory (to see and hear what it sounds like when you play certain notes over certain chords.) So I started learning that on my own. At that point I knew enough music having studied trumpet from 5th grade all the way up to that point and I was taking private lessons in trumpet, so I was able to do that. Without my private teacher, Gail Phillips, there’s no way I would have been able to figure that out.

And then, of course in college as a jazz composition major, it was required to play everything I wrote, on piano and recorded from my professors. That required me to do quite a bit of work on piano. I still did not take piano lessons nor go through any kind of a curriculum. I should have done both!

Fast forward about 20 years and when we started this academy, my wife was needing to stay home and teach significantly less so she could nurse our son. Well she had a whole roster of piano students that needed to be covered and at that time it was just the two of us at the academy. So guess what that meant? I had to learn piano as in the proper foundation of piano, with the proper fingerings and technique, and all of my scales.

So at about 40 years old, that’s what I did. And it went through the entire curriculum. My situation was a little bit different in that I did not take private lessons at that point because I live with a piano teacher, and of course I had studied music all the way through college with a degree from Berkelee College of Music so I was able to do that. And I’m thankful that I was able to learn. But you know what would have been so much better? I could have never dropped out of piano in the first place. Now I’m convinced that our teachers are great and you’ll love them and would never need to drop out for those reasons, you won’t need a new teacher, like I did in my case. I probably could have just found a new teacher which probably would have been a better situation.

But never underestimate the power of piano. Today I play piano at least 6 days a week, very likely seven on many weeks. Yes, it’s a significant part of my work, it’s also still a significant part of my comfort, joy, fun, and inspiration.”

If you are looking for piano lessons in Olympia, we’ve got you covered with music lessons that matter and make a difference!