Empowering you: Learn the music you love!
Lorcan Cleary, piano teacher in Amsterdam.
Ten years of teaching, in Ireland and the Netherlands. A BMus (Hons) from the TU Dublin Conservatoire, and a studio in Oud-West where I teach children from about six and adults at any stage.
I started piano at seven, and before long I was finding pieces I wanted to play and working them out myself.
Most of what I think about teaching comes out of that. A student who wants the piece will go to the piano. A student handed something they didn’t choose tends to stop.
Lessons are in Oud-West, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Vondelpark entrance, easy by bike or tram.
Where I trained
Graded exams with the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and my senior certificate with them in fifth year. Music was my best subject at school so I took it into college, and graduated from the TU Dublin Conservatoire in 2020 with a BMus (Hons).
I played the whole way through. Two years as pianist with the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland, and around twenty concerts a year in the bigger Irish venues: the RDS, the Helix, the Convention Centre, the Waterfront. One St Patrick’s Day I played Carnegie Hall.
Ten years of teaching
Eight music schools between Ireland and the Netherlands. In the early years I cycled to students’ houses. Later I taught privately on South Circular Road in Dublin 8, and spent the summer of 2019 at a music camp in the United States, teaching piano, ensembles and musical theatre to children all day for weeks at a stretch.
I teach children from about six, and adults at any stage, beginners included. The adult work has been what I’ve enjoyed most, and my own playing has got better because of it.
How I teach
I want you able to work without me.
So I explain the reasoning. Why that fingering, why this scale now, why we’re drilling the bar before the hard one instead of the hard one. If you know why, you can do it again at home on Wednesday.
Beyond that: music you want to play, enough scales and theory to make playing easier, and a pace that holds up through a bad week at work or a heavy term at school.
The books
I enjoy creating educational journals and textbooks. The ideas usually turn up mid-lesson, while I’m working out why a student is stuck on something.
The newest is How to Practice Piano, out in 2026 after almost a year of work. It goes through what actually happens when you sit down to practise and sets out a full system for doing it, at a level of detail a weekly half hour doesn’t allow.
Away from the lesson
Left alone at the piano I play film and game music, and I’ll stay with a score for hours. The composers I keep going back to are Medtner, Ravel, Debussy, Mozart and Beethoven.