Sarah Leon

I have been playing piano for 15 years. In that time, I've played accompaniment for 8 musical theater productions as well as 4 years of choir (plus singing)! I have also had the honor of playing every week with my church worship band for the past 6 years. And last but not least, I was fortunate to have 4 years of teaching piano with a locally-owned performing arts studio, both in person and online.  

Because I live with a family of performers, I'm always surrounded by music and we often play together and help each other learn! I can play just about any genre, but the ones I'm most familiar with are theater, new age/soundtrack, pop, rock, some classical, and songs made famous by the Internet ("I'm blue, da ba dee, da ba dai..."). To expand my knowledge and give myself a fun challenge, I'm currently working on learning more about jazz and Latin music.

My first piece of advice to you if you're not sure you're ready to commit to playing piano: an instrument without lessons is a lot more fun than lessons without the instrument! Plus, financially, a piano or keyboard is a one-time investment while lessons are usually ongoing payments. So, find a good instrument, play around with it at home, watch a few YouTube videos if that's your thing, and if you still love it and are interested to learn more, you're ready for lessons with a teacher!

I'm here to help you learn what and how you want, at the perfect pace for you! I believe in setting small, achievable goals to build confidence for reaching towards broader, long-term goals. Some of my students' best successes have been learning songs that they're passionate about, and applying concepts learned from those pieces to their future musical endeavors. Because of this, I love the idea of allowing students to bring in pieces they're excited about, rather than stick to a more rigid method.

Your lessons will feature a good deal of reading instruction, but they will also include rote learning as well as ear training and some music writing. When a student is at the right playing level to learn a new piece, but it's a bit beyond their reading level, I will support my rote lessons with adapted reading/writing, such as writing the names of notes or even drawing pictures of keys or recording tutorial-style videos if needed.

If you get stuck on something at home, I always prefer my students reach out to me for help rather than just waiting until their next lesson. So, if you're not sure what you're supposed to do or how to do it, you can contact me between lessons to ask for help. Your lessons will be much more worthwhile for you if you're getting to learn something new every time instead of doing the same thing over and over!