An actual email comment from a potential student:

I am interested in her learning, of course, but I want her to gain a love for music and the craft as well. This is important to me, as a mom and a former student of piano who was turned off by an overly-strict teacher. For example, if I didn’t raise my wrists enough, she poked them underneath with a sharp pencil. And I got my fingers mashed quite a few times because my fingering wasn’t great.

My response,

“I am the co-founder (along with my wife) and director. I can assure you (a) we would never invite someone on our team that taught like that! And if (b) they later became like that, they would be removed swiftly. We care about the music, deeply. And technique matters, but primarily as a means to better music. More importantly however, we care about our students. We want all of our students to find joy, wonder, and fun in music, not drudgery and misery.”

In addition, with the exception of extremely young students that just might not be ready yet, we really don’t like to put age limits on instruments. I had a first lesson with a cornet student today. The mom called us because apparently the prior teacher decided he was too young! I think he is 8. He was able to slur from middle C to low C on all three partials chromatically down to the bottom of the horn, he learned his G Major scale today (already knew C), and he could read. Why on earth would he be too young?