The initial evaluation is scheduled to get a sense of student’s skill and focus level, learning style, interests, student’s goals and effective ways of achieving them. It gives a student, parents and teacher an opportunity to see if student and teacher would be a good match for collaboration, to discuss practice and progress expectations, to recommend useful learning materials and repertoire.

During the evaluation, students who have experience playing piano, would be expected to perform several pieces that demonstrate their technique level, musicality and ability to hear polyphonic structure. In addition, the orientation in notation will be evaluated through short sight reading, and brief theory questions will be asked to evaluate overall level of student’s musical knowledge.

For students, who never had experience playing piano, brief tasks will be given to evaluate their level of concentration, the speed of their reactions, motor skills and hand coordination, hearing precision (through singing back short melody), sense of rhythm (through clapping back simple rhythmical patterns).

Based on the evaluation, the recommendations on materials, instrument, amount of lessons and home time practicing will be given and schedule discussed in case the student, parents and teacher are ready to start.

The initial evaluation is also available via Zoom or FaceTime for foreign students or for US students living outside Los Angeles, USA.

“DO SOMETHING TODAY, THAT YOU WILL THANK YOURSELF FOR TOMORROW”
Dr. Natalia Kartashova, Ph.D, DMA