Piano Lessons in Denton

Greetings! I am Matt and look forward to helping you along with your piano journey. I have been a career pianist all my life; I began at age 10 and by age 13 I was giving concert lectures to all the schools in my area where I grew up in California. When I was 16, I won an international concerto competition and had my debut with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra. I have had the pleasure of studying with some great artists over the years, most notably, 1985 Cliburn Gold Medalist Jose Feghali. For several years, I was both his student and assistant, and we did some very exciting work.

These days, I am a student of Chopin and his novel, ergonomic piano method which was almost lost to history. My main focus will be that you have an ease and comfort of playing, always looking to find ways to give you more freedom with the instrument, and my hope is that I can enable you to explore the great piano literature in a pain-free, fun way. I usually employ supplemental lessons from Bartok and Bach, and usually ask that you split your time between these things and what you are most excited to learn yourself.

Throughout my piano career I have worked to develop technique. When I turned to the history of Chopin I discovered something unique: According to historical records, he had a unique way of both teaching and playing piano. This was not apparent from printed scores of Chopin's works. Though there have been several editions of his work, review of his original material, made accessible through The Chopin Museum in Warsaw and the Biblioteque in Paris, show clearly that his original instructions were never followed by engravers. The only time this was attempted was in the first French Edition. According to his pupils and contemporaries, he had a unique method that was not something his peers from the German school could imitate. Through almost a decade of research and study, I have reconstructed this method and can now both demonstrate and teach it. As Chopin said it would, learning the piano his way required years of unlearning my formative piano technique. I now have a piano technique that allows access to the keyboard in a way that is not found in the modern era, unless you observe those blind geniuses of the piano such as Art Tatum. It is this unique approach to the piano that I offer. It provides a profound freedom of expression through a few simple methods, such as a unique turning of the hand during play, that coincide with modern kinesthetic and physiological research.

I do remote and in-person lessons, and I do a semi-regular piano stream where I demonstrate my own practice, and where piano enthusiasts and performers often come to discuss music and technique. I look forward to hearing from you.

A few recordings of my work can be previewed on soundcloud under 'mindwa'.