MUSIC LESSONS
Collegiate’s music program offers both music ensembles and private music lessons to Collegiate students Grades K-12 for the upcoming school year.
A student moves her bow over the strings of her violin and the world begins to take on a new texture. The drama of the piece this student has been working on — a sonata by the composer George Frideric Handel — builds with helter-skelter intensity. It’s the kind of piece this student loves: pulsing with bursts of energy that move toward a spacious triumph. In each note she plays she can imagine a narrative, a story of a great clash, and into this imagination she infuses her own feeling and style, elevating the piece and making it uniquely hers.
This total
emotional immersion strikes the student as the difference between playing notes and playing music. But with the help of her private music instructor Melissa Jones, a classically trained violinist and Collegiate’s Middle and Upper School Orchestra Director, the student is able to contemplate the thematic and structural composition of the piece with a rigorous intensity that heightens her playing.
This, after all, is what Collegiate School’s Private Music Program is all about: Giving students the space to work diligently one-on-one with a skilled musical instructor. The personalized instruction — and the rapport that grows over years of lessons — allows students to learn at a pace they are comfortable with. “It’s my particular hope that students feel confident about what they’re doing with their instrument,” Jones says. “With the help of private lessons, students learn the necessary technique to play well, they learn lots of repertoire, and, maybe most importantly, they discover their own artistic expression. And because these lessons are one-on-one, students get to really have a unique musical education that works for them.”
Taking music lessons at Collegiate offers unparalleled advantages. With years of practice with the same instructor, students develop a sustained connection both to their instrument and their teacher. “The beauty of having just one teacher in a private lesson is you really make that connection — not only from teacher to student but from person to person,” one piano student says. “Your growth is more cultivated, more specific and tailored to your style of playing and your style of learning. My instructor really knows the way that I learn music and the way that I interpret it. And from there, she can see my strengths and weaknesses, the things that I need to work on, which makes the way I learn music more efficient and my trajectory as a performer clearer.”
OUR INSTRUCTORS
Piano - Connie Tuttle
Piano - Markus J. Compton
Piano - Ivy Haga
Piano - Deborah Huish
Piano - Mara Smith
Violin, Viola - Melissa Jones
Violin, Viola - Helen Coulson
Violin - Keadron Schwoebel
Violin, Viola - Thomas Stevens
Cello - Ryan Lannan
Classical Guitar - David Robinson
Classical Guitar - Derek Tuttle
Clarinet, Flute - Karl von Klein
Percussion - Scott Clark
