Teaching Approach:
I offer relaxed, supportive lessons that focus on inviting the creativity and musical self-expression of each student. My goal is to nurture feelings of success, joy and mastery, enabling each student to be self-motivated, skilled and confident. My approach emphasizes improvising, composing and playing pop, rock, blues, classical and accompaniment with or without reading notation, as well as playing by ear and learning chord and scale theory through improvisation. I enjoy working with adults, teens and children of varying skill levels and people with special needs. Completely individualizing each lesson, my non-traditional approach works well for a range of students with different learning styles and for adults who played piano for years but never learned to improvise or play from lead sheets. As a certified Simply Music teacher, I also teach Play-A-Story, a remarkable new Simply Music program designed for four to six year olds to play the piano with ease, fun and skill through improvisation, imagination and story.

Background:
B.A., Smith College; M.A. Arts Education, Goddard College. I have been a performing artist and arts educator for forty years, and have taught private piano lessons for thirteen years, during which time I have developed diverse student-centered teaching methods to reach a variety of learners. I have been a certified Simply Music teacher for five years and am also certified to teach Simply Music’s Play-A-Story.

Contact:
Sarah Elston
Box 362
Williamsburg, MA 01096
413-268-3186
sarahelston@mac.com