HOME ABOUT TEACHING TRADITION PIANO
LESSONS
HARPSICHORD
LESSONS
THEORY
L
ESSONS
STUDENT
R
ESOURCES
VIDEOS & MP3's FAQs & LINKS CONTACT
 
 

Testimonials

A few comments by Colleagues, Students, and Parents


"Scott is among a small fraction of musicians who have the uncanny ability to communicate musical structure and content in a meaningful, thoughtful way to an audience. As a producer and recording coach, he has been sought out by the best-known artists precisely because of his sensitivity and comprehension of the composer's intent; he is noted for his ability to bring out the artist's best performances. Scott is also a fine pianist and first-rate teacher."

Peter Brownlee 
Piano Faculty, 
Central Oregon Community College


"Scott immediately put me at ease. At my very first lesson, he gave me a piece to play that was at once challenging but also at a level that I could enjoy. I can't say enough about his patient, caring attitude. He has a true teacher's gift for inspiring you; he always works with you from where you are, while encouraging you to progress by giving you the tools you need to keep improving. I now play piano daily, after a thirty year gap, thanks to his gentle guidance. I recommend him without reservation, especially for anyone coming back to the piano, as I was. His enthusiasm is contagious. And his patience, unlike my own, always made me feel like there was improvement as long as I was willing to practice what he was teaching me."

Cathy Lind Hayes, Actress

"It is my pleasure to recommend Mr. Scott Johnson as an effective and patient music teacher. Mr. Johnson became my daughter’s music teacher two years ago. When I interviewed Mr. Johnson (Scott), I gave him in depth background on my daughter’s disability, Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD) that is part of the Autistic Spectrum. He cheerfully embraced the challenge of engaging my daughter in piano educational instruction.

"My daughter was eight years old when she began working with Scott learning at first the basic outline of the keyboard. Soon she was able to grasp reading music and learning to understand music theory. Finally, it was an incredible milestone to hear her play the music she was reading at the same time.

"Scott’s perseverance and music ability has translated into her playing songs and trying to sing along. I can’t thank Scott enough for teaching her that through consistently applying herself, the impossible is attainable.

"If you have any questions regarding my recommendation or would like to more know more about my daughter's challenges and success in music, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.
"
                                                                                                                              Amy DeBlaise, Parent

   

"I had the great pleasure of a first piano lesson with Scott Johnson just less than a week ago, and I must say that never in my life have I taken a lesson in an instrument besides my voice where the teacher has, literally, changed my life inside an hour and a half.

" I was a young piano student from ages eight to twelve or so, banging away on the family grand under the jaded (I would say, jaundiced)  eye of a string of terrifying teachers...pushed through the usual "level one, level two and some basic Bartok, the experience of learning piano then seemed like an endless chain of practice without reward and having my petrified of math and sciences young female brain learn and unlearn my sight reading, over and over…erasing that which was learned by rote and teaching without reason other than that it was "the accepted procedure". I was so resistant to the whole process, much as I loved music even at that age, that I remember on one occasion I smashed my head backwards through the pane glass window of our living room next to the piano under the eye of my mother and piano "teacher", an "accident" indeed.

"These feelings stayed with me until my early thirties, when I decided to start doing for myself what I had wished to do all my life, namely, learn to pay the piano not like a poke and peck adult constant beginner, but well, maybe one day, beautifully even.

"I started with a teacher who was a recommendation from a friend, a jolly fellow who did much to simplify and release my irrational fears of the learning process, but still I was left somewhat unsatisfied, feeling at the pace we took it would be years and years before I could begin to play the music I dreamed of, Chopin and Beethoven and Ravel, and not in the oversimplified, reading for Dummies version of the adult beginner books, but as the masters dreamed them and wrote them.  I left his studio after a year and a half, feeling as if I had made small progress but not much.

"This year, here I am a few years later, and bought a new piano so that I could work on voice at home with my teacher and pianist, and I thought, what the hell? Maybe now I actually might learn to play this thing...and by whim I went searching on the internet for piano teachers websites, setting on Scott's finally because he out of all of them seemed to have some knowledge of an actual science of teaching, a real pedagogy based in tried and found true methods, someone who might, just might lead me away from point and peck.

"He arrived for our first lesson, and I must say I was a bit doubtful, ready to be let down again and led down the boring path of treat the adult beginner like a five year old who has twenty years to learn, etcetera...but within a few minutes with Scott, I began to see a different future forming before me

" He pulled out a few texts that seemed slightly arcane and exotic and from another era entirely, some written in French, and started showing me the exercises for note learning contained therein.

"Within an hour I was playing with confidence all the notes on treble and bass clef!! Suddenly everything was easy!

"I started to feel as if someone had come over and opened a door to music that had been shut, and rusted, and covered in cobwebs all my life, but nevertheless, there, waiting.

"I was afraid I was experiencing some kind of hallucinatory manifestation of Scott's super teacher sleight of hand, afraid that after he left that day I would go back to hunt and peck and my advances would be as nothing, but the opposite occurred! In the days that followed, this past week, I practiced every day and FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! this process was FUN! and EASY! and I wanted to !!  Now playing the piano has become like a drug I can't get enough of! All due to Scott! and his lineage of teachers- I have found that now sight reading, and indeed, the freedom of my hands to move without my constant willing and looking where they need go is happening like breathing, coming faster and faster- and this after only a week! I can't wait to see where I am after a year! I am sure that lessons with Mr. Johnson, to those who have suffered through "normal" teachers, can be described as nothing less than a revelatory, “paradise found” experience. With that one lesson he has already brought so much joy and hope to my life!

"And funnily enough, after only a few days of practicing his techniques, I opened the "adult beginner' classical themes book I was struggling with three years ago, and found I COULD PLAY EVERY TUNE AS IF I HAD OPENED A CHILDREN"S BOOK WHEN I WAS EXPECTING PROUST!

Christina Kew
Artist.  Malibu , CA

More to come - under construction

 

 

 

     

Copyright © 2012 Scott Johnson