Private lessons with top Piano instructors near Philadelphia, PA

What do you offer for a beginner? Assuming a student has never played a piano and is 10 years old or older, lessons will focus on fundamentals of technique and sight reading classically oriented material. I follow piano curriculum developed by John Thompson and Alfred. For students under 10 years of age without any prior piano training, a preparatory book may be used. After a minimum 6-12 months of continuous piano lessons (assuming a weekly schedule), music theory will be introduced, along with chord playing. What do you offer for a non-beginner? Assuming a student has had a minimum of one year of continuous piano training, depending on the lesson customization, lessons will be based around the Alfred and/or John Thompson curriculum, and music theory and chord playing will be introduced. Should a student already know chord playing, I will fast forward the lesson to sight reading lead sheet/fake books and learning pop, rock or jazz piano playing styles (left and right hands). I will also teach how to transpose (play in different keys) with approximately 6-9 months of intensive training. What do you offer for an advance player? I have taught few classical pianists (with Bachelor's and/or Master's music degree) who intend to learn modern piano playing such as Pop/Rock/Jazz/Blues styles. Throughout my 10+ years of teaching experience, I have developed a guideline and a private curriculum to introduce chord playing effectively, train left hand movement based on a certain style, and how to speak in musician's language. In addition, I will teach students how to learn a certain music feeling (ie a pop song shall sound like a pop song and a jazz song shall sound like a jazz song). Please also see the question about improvisation teaching approach below. Training to 'get' a certain music feeling is not a hard lesson; however, it is a tricky process and requires specific customization based on the student's skill. I have found various ways such as shifting the metronome counting, creating different beat subdivision for the same song and guiding with simplified written improvisation which can help students to understand different styles of music. Do you teach music theory? Yes, I teach music theory as a part of chord playing for which a basic foundation of music theory is required. I used several book resources for music theory; however, I also have a compact fundamental music theory approach (I do not require student to do a lot of paper work, but the teaching is done through a repetitive music theory concept, orally), focusing on how to 'visualize' music theory on the keyboard. Should a student want to learn Jazz or a more advanced music theory level (ie college level music theory), I will be happy to provide these. Several advanced topics are harmonic function analysis, modes & modal interchange, chord scale, tension theory, reharmonization, and lydian chromatic concept.