There is no ordinary gateway into music’s joyful, comforting depths.
The need and singular desire for authentic companionship shapes each individual encounter with the piano into an indefinitely vulnerable, adventurous, and precious path.
There is no ultimate teaching method that suits all. With each new student—whether a capricious child, a self-conscious edgy adolescent, or a “been there, done that” mature adult—the method itself and the teaching strategy must be each time attuned, reinvented, and, over and again, reborn.
I hope that you, dear surfer of virtual spaces, landed your attention, not solely by accident, if for only a moment, on this page in my musical world. This world would be flat if not for some of my students who agreed (see student gallery of testimonials) to share their personal journeys to piano. For that I am deeply grateful to each one of them.
Perhaps you are a parent who dreams of finding a way to fire up your gifted child (no child is deprived of sensibility for music, and the job of the teacher is to activate that gift) through an encounter with the magical whimsical kingdom of music…
Or, you, a busy working professional, are overwhelmed and longing to take a musical pause to escape, albeit for a short while, from the mind-numbing noise of daily life…
I imagine you could be the one whose mind, as if in search of an invigorating shake up, persistently whispers: “Play, play with the piano, lose all your burdening thoughts among the spontaneous order of running keys” … Could that be a moment when one sheds one’s years claiming back a joyful youth?
Perhaps you are hesitant, skeptical, or simply afraid to fail … so what?
I invite you to allow yourself another try. Several times and for different reasons I myself was about to let go, for the good (as I thought back then), of playing, of music, of my authentic harmonious self (read my story at www.oraitkin.com).
Yet, something, or someone, would give me another chance, another try, a reprise.
Now, I would like to offer you a gift of that try: one encounter, one lesson that, who knows, might lead to a longer teacher-student connection, or at the least may reveal that even in the midst of the deafening cacophony of this world, you can be led gently to recover your harmonious self. The harmony, after all, is not a feature from afar. The harmony is right there, between the piano keys and the fingertips of your own two hands.
Ora
Reprise – Ora Itkin School of Piano and Musicianship
Ora Itkin | Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
oraitkin@yahoo.com | www.oraitkin.com
REPRISE 