I’ve been listening to classical music my whole life. When I started to learn piano, the musical language was already natural to me.
Our home was always filled with music and I grew up listening to Angela Hewitt play Bach, Murray Perahia play Mozart, and Arthur Rubinstein play Chopin, among many others.
my piano teachers and education (click to expand)
My first serious piano teacher was Irina Ginzburg, my scary Russian teacher. She was extremely passionate and I considered “not bad, not bad at all…” to be the highest praise. Mrs. Ginzburg may have been terrifying but I also learned so much from her, and sometimes I see her teaching style come out in me—in a kinder, gentler fashion. For two years, I studied with Juilliard-trained (BS/MS) university professor Findlay Cockrell in Albany, NY. Our family moved back to Calgary and I began lessons with Peter Rudzik, a soft-spoken teacher who had won many awards in his native Poland. Under his guidance I completed my Royal Conservatory of Music (very rigorous Canadian music system) Grade 10 exam with First Class Honors, including the associated music theory and music history exams. As an adult, I have continued my piano education through studying masterclasses and performances by many of the world’s finest pianists. I have had lessons with Czech concert pianists Karel Košárek and Božena Steinerová, am a regular participant of chamber music workshops coached by members of the illustrious Martinů Quartet, and starting in Fall 2026 I will be mentored by Chad Bowles (who studied with legendary American pianist Earl Wild) through a 3-year Tholen Fellowship with Portland Piano International.
In 1993, I received a medal for the highest score in Alberta, Canada, for my Royal Conservatory of Music Grade 8 exam. The following year, I received an extremely rare full mark score of 100 on my NYSSMA (New York State School Music Association) Grade 6 exam, the highest grade level in that music system. I have won numerous awards at the Calgary Kiwanis Music Festival competitions and have been told through the years that I had the musical sensitivity to pursue piano professionally. I recently participated in my first piano competition in almost 30 years, and was a finalist in the 2026 Boston Amateur Silver Stream.
the story of my earlier career
I studied Electrical Engineering-Computer Science at Yale with the goal of having a stable career. During my undergrad I took a coached chamber music class and played the Schumann Piano Quintet, sparking a deep love for chamber music that endures to this day. I became a software engineer, a career that lasted for two decades before I quit to take care of my health and return to focusing on piano. This time it came with a new obsession for the subtleties of tone production and the nuances of pedaling, as well as interpretive decisions of phrasing and musical details.
I am not a virtuosic nor a note-perfect performer (though I have solid and ergonomic technique), but what I do have is a finely developed sense of musical instinct, combined with the skill to effectively guide other pianists to produce the desired sound and phrasing.
how I became a piano coach
I fell into this second career of coaching piano by accident. I was giving feedback sessions to a few advanced pianist friends to help make their playing more stylistically appropriate and as refined and moving as possible—and realized that is what I want to do! It is incredibly rewarding work. Competition jurors want to be moved by the music, or pianists want to play as beautifully as they can for their own fulfilment.
Whatever your goals are, I want to help you make music worth listening to and to touch people’s hearts. And hopefully we both have fun in the process!
Classical Music Concerts in Portland
I continue to listen to classical music and attend many, many concerts. The musical phrasing and breaths and voicing still apply, even when the works are not for solo piano.
Portland is an amazing city for classical music, featuring not one but two (!!) organizations that bring world-class chamber music to our halls (Chamber Music Northwest and Friends of Chamber Music), we have our incredible Oregon Symphony, Portland Piano International brings established and rising piano stars, there’s Portland Opera and OrpheusPDX (it’s so important to listen to bel canto opera to understand Chopin), Portland Baroque for (you guessed it) Baroque, and 45th Parallel Universe features both traditional and contemporary classical music. There are many more classical music organizations, house concerts, masterclasses, and other opportunities to enjoy classical music, but these are the ones I attend the most.