Welcome to Amy's Piano Studio!

Amy trains her student using the Russian piano technique—students will develop a beautiful, relaxed style of playing and learn to constantly release tension while they are at the piano. When Amy first began piano lessons as a young child, she was taught the way most American children are taught: to play with her fingers, and only her fingers! As a result, she carried a lot of tension in her hands and arms, and she was limited in the amount of expressiveness and color she was able to achieve in her playing. It wasn’t until she had an instructor who’d been trained in the Russian tradition that she realized there was a better, more holistic approach!

An important tenet in the Russian school of piano playing is to use one’s wrist weight to aid in sound production rather than playing only with one’s fingers. In fact, the entire upper body should be involved in playing—wrists, arms, and the strong muscles of the back. By learning to use the whole upper body in playing, one can achieve a greater variety of sounds and truly learn to play with the beautiful “singing” tone that Russian pianists are known for.

The late classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz sums up Amy's ideas about tone and color very well: “[The piano] is capable of sounds which are loud or soft; but in between there are many, many degrees of sound which may be played. To be able to produce many varieties of sound, now that is what I call technique, and that is what I try to do…You must practice for color. Each color you must be able to get on each finger. When you are able to do that, when you have real color in your playing, the interpretation cannot be artificial.”

Learning an instrument is beneficial for many reasons: aside from the obvious enjoyment one gets out of playing beautiful music, working at a skill week after week helps young people build confidence, increase memorization and focus, create and work toward goals, and become self-directed learners. These are not just skills that musicians need to have—these are useful skills for all areas of life!

Amy descends from a long line of musicians (both her mother and great-grandmother were piano teachers). She has studied piano since the age of eight. She is a creative person through and through—she earned her BFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College ('14) with a Minor in Music, and she earned her MFA at Boston University ('16). She holds an ARCT Performer’s Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music and is in the process of getting her Music Teacher's Certification through the National Music Teacher's Association. She has training in piano, music theory and pedagogy. Amy is a current member of the Central East Ohio Music Teacher's Association; she regularly attends trainings and conferences in order to grow as a teacher!

Amy coaches her students to take pride in their accomplishments, to exude an air of assurance and poise at the piano, and to become self-directed learners. Performing is a key part of one's music education, thus all of Amy's students are given the opportunity to perform in recitals, small group classes, and in Royal Conservatory of Music exams if they choose.