Piano Teachers

[shaveice]

i'm reluctantly posting this for my wife (i think she should post her own questions) but here are her questions:

* does anyone have anything to say (good or bad) about ellen masaki, ernest chang, or chieko munakata as piano teachers?

* does anyone know where chieko munakata's classes are held? a search online only shows a P.O. Box address.

thanks.

[achow]

I have taken piano lessons from Ernest Chang. I have to say that he is a really good teacher and excellent. He is one of the best. I been playing since I was 6. Now, since I have a busy life of my own being a part time preschool teacher, and a part time student, I still play the piano off and on.

[lavagal]

My daughters have been taking lessons with a young woman named Edna Leung, who lives in Hawaii Kai. She's a UH student, majoring in music education, and lives with her parents. Very reasonably priced. I just adore her. She is gentle and kind, has a beautiful spirit, and is extremely patient. My Charlotte, who is now six and has been taking lessons for about two years, truly tests Edna, so I've volunteered her as a thesis project, LOL.

Her students first bow with the teacher in greeting prior to beginning the lesson. At the end, the pair bow to each other again. She plans recitals for the children, and helps the kids when they are preparing for school talent shows. Edna also teaches adults. Both her sister and brother, whom are younger than her, are very accomplished pianists, so I'm suspecting mom and dad kept at them all from a very young age.

If you are interested, PM me and I can connect you with Miss Edna. Someday she will graduate and we will no longer have her. I expect her to accomplish great things in life!

[scrivener]

As you know, the Chang vs. Masaki debate has been going on for generations, and although I never took classes at either school, I have many friends who did and I have taught a few students who did, too.

My other disclaimer is that for some reason, far more of my friends took lessons with Chang, and all the really good piano players I knew in high school were Chang's students. I also went to high school in a place that made it very easy to drive to Chang's studio: Fewer than ten minutes on backroads with very few traffic lights got you there with no stress.

My friends are fiercely loyal to Ernest Chang. The ones who moved away make a point of visiting whenever they're back in town; others have done work for him (bookkeeping and stuff like that) in exchange for the occasional brush-up lesson. The few people I knew who went to Masaki when I was in high school did not seem to have the same devotion to the teacher herself, but they also were not as good as my friends who were Chang students. The very good musicians would have a better relationship with their teacher anyway, is what I figure.

Here's the one instructional thing I know, but this is coming from Chang students and not Masaki students: Masaki would give her students recordings of the pieces students were working on, and students were expected to learn the music exactly the way it was played on the recordings. There are definitely some very good arguments to be made for this style of instruction. John Mellencamp once made his band learn a hundred pop classics from the fifties and sixties, note for note (if I remember the interview correctly), before the band went on the road for the Whenever We Wanted tour, not because he planned to play them, but because he wanted his band to know exactly what its roots were. Many artists learn their craft by imitating exactly what great artists before them have done; this is not new, nor is it scandalous.

But you can also see what the counter-arguments might be, and my Chang-studio friends are pretty adamant that their development as musicians (and not just piano players) would have been stunted by learning to play with recordings. Whether they are right I'll leave to someone else.

Of my students who went to Masaki, none were students of Masaki herself. My small handful of students who went to Chang did have Chang as their instructor (but we're talking like two or three). One of these Masaki students was an accompanist in one of the plays I directed, and I thought he was terrific. Very directable and enjoyed himself a great deal.

Good luck in your search. The only thing I'll add is that if I had kids and they showed any proficiency, I'd audition them first for Chang, and if they didn't get accepted, Masaki probably wouldn't be my second choice, either.

[shaveice]

wow! thank you all for your thoughtful and helpful replies!

scriv, i'm sure people in the know are well aware of it but i didn't know there was a chang vs masaki thing; makes sense, tho.

thank you again for all the great feedback!

[akrauth]

I'm not a professional piano teacher, but this is my fourteenth year taking lessons, and I've taught people some things when they want me to. If anyone has a general music question that they need to ask someone, feel free to shoot me a message. I'm willing to share my mana'o as well.

Pomaika'i! (Good luck!)