violin teacher

another big task for me was to find a new violin teacher for jj. the mommy network was very helpful. i spoke with an american mom who explained the french music education system to me.
there were 3 ways to go:
1) public conservatories – another wonderful thing provided by the city government. each arrondissement has a music conservatory. kids can get very reasonably priced music lessons subsidized by the city. down side – it is in keeping with the rigid, old fashioned educational system. teachers yell at the kids and tell them all the things they are doing wrong. they are not gentle.
2) private conservatories – higher standard music education, more expensive and also old fashioned french style teachers.
3) private teachers who teach in their homes or yours.
another mom told me that the conservatories were already filled for the year. i had been surfing the web looking for teachers and there were a couple of sites which were specifically advertising music teachers. i didn’t know how to choose without a recommendation. one teacher, though, stood out. she had a website advertising her contemporary music trio (http://www.zodiactrio.com/) made up of a japanese pianist, a russian clarinetist and her, playing violin. she is french, but was partially educated in the u.s. i gave her a call, and wanted to sit in on a lesson – which is how i’ve looked for teachers in the past. this was not possible since she taught in her students’ homes, but she offered to just give a lesson to start. so we tried her out and both j and i liked her. she speaks english well, but i took the advice of one of the moms who said that having a private music teacher was an opportunity to work on language. so the lessons will be in french. it was an intense hour with not a moment of rest. the teacher asks jj to evaluate herself after playing, so she can get in the habit of listening more critically. the teacher’s style is a bit french, but since she has studied in the u.s., i think her approach will be slightly more tempered, which is perfect. her playing is very dynamic and she tries to push jj that way too. the nice thing is that she comes to our home, and there is no commitment, we just schedule a few weeks at a time. when she travels with her trio, there will be no lesson, but more work to cover the missed weeks. so far, so good. we’ll try it for a while and see how it goes. Print this post