Private piano lessons and Chamber/Ensemble music are mostly offered on Saturdays. Materials are included.

Private piano lessons can be a rewarding way to channel creativity and learning. Students will be taught proper usage of the pedal, correct posture, effective practicing techniques, patterns in melody and rhythm, sight-reading skills, physical coordination, and auditory skills.

Chamber and Ensemble music. Classical and Jazz. Wouldn't it be great for students to enhance their skills, learn about genres in music, learn effective ways to practice, to practice together, and to have rewarding concerts in the park and at other community gatherings? Intermediate and advanced welcome. Times and music to be arranged.

Please contact Joan Peters for times and availability prior to registering.

Price for piano lessons: $15.00 per half-hour.

If you'd like to register for piano lessons online and pay by credit card, click here.

Price for Chamber/Ensemble: $20.00 per hour.

If you'd like to register for ensemble/chamber music online and pay by credit card, click here.

Otherwise, you can pay by cash or check through City Hall.

*Registration and payment are required prior to taking lessons.

*There will be no refunds for missed lessons. Missed lessons can be made up at a later time. For more information, take a look at the Refund Policy.

About Me

I have been playing the piano since age seven. I was born with a significant vision problem (severe astigmatism, strabismus, and my brain shutting off the weaker eye) and I also have an auditory processing problem. Music was a blessing in disguise because I strengthened my auditory skills due to my poor visual skills as I learned to play the piano by ear. By age ten, I taught myself to read music. In addition to playing the piano, I taught myself to play the flute and the guitar. I have developed excellent visual and auditory memory skills.

In sixth grade, I auditioned for a community orchestra for students with advanced skills. At age 13 or 14, I chose the piano as my main instrument. I was accepted into USC's Performing Arts Annex, which is a music program for the young and gifted, and I studied at PAA until I went to college. I had the privilege of working with master concert pianists, such as John Perry, Daniel Pollack, and Ilana Vered among others.

During these years, I had my own chamber music group with a cellist and a flautist. I competed in numerous competitions and participated in the Baroque Festival in Southern California. At 16, I was accepted and attended a summer music program in Sewanee, Tennessee. At age 18, I was accepted into USC's School of Music and received a BM in Music Performance.

The gift that music has given me is that I have developed a very structured, organized approach to teaching and learning as well as pure enjoyment. Many of the same principles overlap and can be applied to any type of learning. I have developed ways of teaching students to use their visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive skills to organize and learn new information.

Because playing an instrument uses both parts of the brain, it is an excellent choice for helping students develop parts of their brains in order to learn, think, organize, read, write, and do math. Playing an instrument, based on my own experience and my experience in teaching others, has had a tremendous effect on processing skills, especially auditory skills because music teaches one to listen carefully to themselves and to others while playing individually and in groups.

I would like to give to the community what I had growing up - a fun social experience playing ensemble music. I am excited about doing this.

About Music

Here are some articles regarding neurological research that shows how music study can actively contribute to brain development:

Studying music encourages self-discipline and diligence, traits that carry over into intellectual pursuits and that lead to effective study and work habits. An association of music and math has, in fact, long been noted. Creating and performing music promotes elf-expression and provides self-gratification while giving pleasure to others. In medicine, increasing published repots demonstrate that music has a healing effect on patients. For all these reasons, it deserves strong support in our educational system, along with the other arts, the sciences, and athletics. - Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Leading Heart Surgeon, Baylor College of Music.

A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reported that music training is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills, the skills necessary for learning math and science. - Shaw, Rauscher, Levine, Wright, Dennis and Newcomb, "Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning," Neurological Research, Vol. 19, February 1997.

Students in two Rhode Island elementary schools who were given an enriched, sequential, skill-building music program showed marked improvement in reading and math skills. Students in the enriched program who had started out behind the control group caught up to statistical equality in reading and pulled ahead in math. - Gardiner, Fox, Jeffrey and Knowles, as reported in Nature, may 23, 1996.

Researchers at the University of Montreal used various brain imaging techniques to investigate brain activity during musical tasks and found that sight-reading musical scores and playing music both activate regions in all four of the cortex's lobes, and that parts of the cerebellum are also activate during those tasks. - Sergent, J., Zuck, E., Tenial, S., and MacDonall, B. (1992). Distributed neural network underlying musical sight reading and keyboard performance. Science, 257, 106-109.

A University of Califronia (Irvine) study showed that after eight months of keyboard lessons, preschoolers showed a 46% boost in their spatial reasoning IQ. - Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky and Wright, "Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship," University of California, Irvine, 1994.

Students who participated in arts programs in selected elementary and middle schools in New York City showed significant increases in self-esteem and thinking skills. - National Arts Education Research Center, New York University, 1990.

The musician is constantly adjusting decisions on tempo, tone, style, rhythm, phrasing, and feeling - training the brain to become incredibly good at organizing and conducting numerous activities at once. Dedicated practice of this orchestration can have a great payoff for lifelong attentional skills, intelligence, and an ability for self-knowledge and expression. - Ratey John J., MD. A user's Guide to the Brain. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001.