Piano Lessons with Erika Matei

Erika is from New Jersey originally and grew up in a small town called Ringwood (right outside of Suffern, NY). Her first instrument was piano, which she began at age 4. In late elementary school, she joined band and chorus (picking up saxophone, euphonium, and guitar), took dance, and performed in school musicals. After high school, she decided to study Music Education at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where she also took voice lessons and served as choir director to an after-school program. From there, Erika pursued graduate school at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA and received a Master's in Piano Performance. Before moving back to New York, Erika worked as a private piano and voice teacher for a music school and studying Dalcroze Eurhythmics for my own pedagogical development.

She has performed and taught in a number of scenarios, including public schools, charter schools, private lessons, group piano lessons, early education, senior care facilities, foster homes, and special needs classrooms.

Erika is very flexible and open-minded when it comes to choosing repertoire, method books, practice techniques, and musical genres, and always choose these materials with the number one goal being developmentally appropriate and musically exciting content that supports the specific learning needs of the student. Differentiated instruction is something she strives for in her teaching, so she is always looking for new resources, songs, methods, and creative ways to engage with students.

Erika believes that human has the potential to participate and benefit from musical instruction. Just like science, mathematics, history, or literature, music is an important facet in any child's instruction. While her lessons certainly include piano technique and healthy approaches to keyboard playing, she also strives to focus on discussion and critical thinking with students. Having students develop understanding and ownership of their music-making is one of the most powerful skills. It will serve them for a lifetime. Similarly, it is very important for students to develop an open-minded musical worldview, and Erika assigns pieces from multiple genres, eras, countries, and cultures. In a country with so much diversity, it is important to be understanding and aware of all the varieties of music that exist and the people that they honor. Finally, her most important goal in music instruction is the relationship with the student. Erika firmly believes that everyone is a music-maker, albeit in their own way. Her teaching environment is warm, welcoming, and holds the students' needs at the forefront. Music is not taught or learned in one way; it is oral, aural, physical, visual, and mental. As such, there are so many possibilities and options for anyone that desires to learn music, no matter what their physical, emotional, mental, or learning needs are.