Empowering you: Learn the music you love!
One-to-one piano lessons in Amsterdam Oud-West.
A couple of minutes from the Vondelpark gate. Children from about five, and adults at any stage, including people who have never touched a piano.
Every student gets a tailored lesson. Nobody arrives with the same background or moves at the same speed, so the plan is built around the person at the piano rather than a syllabus.
Payment by iDEAL or WERO, invoiced monthly. Current prices are on the home page.
Most people who get in touch are over twenty-one
A good number haven’t played in decades. Others have never started.
You choose the music. Beethoven sonatas, film scores, The Beatles, whatever made you want to play in the first place. Around that we work on repertoire, scales, theory, aural training, improvisation and some analysis, weighted towards what you want to play.
Adults have jobs. If the week got away from you and you didn’t practise, say so and we’ll practise properly together in the lesson, which gets more done than pretending otherwise.
Adults get on best when they know why. So I give you the reasoning: why that fingering, why this scale now, why we drill the bar before the hard one. Once you know why, you can do it again on your own.
Starting age
Six or seven is the straightforward age to start. Children develop at very different speeds around then, and not evenly: finger independence, the control to hold a steady pulse, and the patience to stay with one thing for half an hour each arrive on their own schedule. A piano helps here, because it gives you the note. Instruments where a child has to find the pitch themselves ask more of an ear that is still settling. Five works for some children, so I’m glad to meet a five-year-old and find out. Earlier again can work if a child has done a pre-instrumental course or has music at home.
Beginners work through a tutor book, normally for the first year. I keep a large library here and pick the book that fits the child, rather than fitting the child to one book.
Thirty minutes, weekly. Games, improvisation, writing their own pieces, and the technology they already use at home. Most children keep coming because they enjoy it, and that is what makes the rest hold: repertoire, scales, technique, aural training and theory, balanced so it never feels like homework.
There’s a chair for parents who want to sit in while a child settles, and most do for the first few weeks.
How the year runs
Term follows the Dutch academic calendar. I teach through the summer as well, block-booked by the month, so you can take as much of it as suits you.
Sheet music is printed here. Current students will find the lesson calendar and the rest of the paperwork on the Important Documents page.
Getting started
Every place starts with a paid trial lesson, booked through the form below. Nothing is committed at the trial. Once you take a place, a month’s notice applies if you decide to stop. See the policies for the detail.