Hi, thanks for popping in to learn about piano lessons and learning music in general. My name is Kinga, and I am a classical pianist and piano teacher. I help children and adults discover the beauty of music, playing, learning, performing, and everything that makes us better people and musicians.
I grew up in Poland, in a beautiful town called Nowy Targ which was establised in 1364 on one of the medieval trading routes. In Poland musical education is accessible to everyone who wants to learn music. There are government funded music schools, a chain of them throughout the country. Music schools provide subjects like playing your instrument, singing in a choir, theory of music, history of music, harmony, ear training, rhythmics, music literature, chamber music playing and musical forms. Uff, that’s a lot of subjects! There are exams every December and June and that’s a really scary time of the year. A small percentage of kids go to music schools, and even smaller graduate, because the system and exams are so tough. Children go to music school every afternoon. After you complete 12 years, you are ready to apply to a musical university, but the competition is so high that many people end up not pursuing music and choose other career paths. While in music school, I started giving occasional piano lessons to friends and neighbours, and I found it really interesting that different people understand music in different ways. I was still young, but I remember clearly the very first lesson I gave, it made me so happy when my student understood a difficult concept and a thing that they thought was impossible to play suddenly became accessible!
After my 12 years in music school, I was lucky enough to get into a musical university and graduated The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. I did my Bachelors with Honours there, and after that also completed another degree, Bachelors with Honours in History at the Silesian University of Katowice. While at the universities, I started teaching on regular basis and quickly found out that this is my absolute passion. Discovering how our minds work, how we comprehend things, how we absorb knowledge and skills is fascinating! From the very first lesson I taught, I knew that I was very lucky to be able to help people discover their potential through music.
After finishing my education, I decided to explore the world and moved to Spain where my sister lived at the time. I joined her for a year and learnt Spanish, it was a great adventure. While there, I met my partner Ben who is Irish, and we both moved to Ireland. I there discovered a different way of teaching, I call it the ‘Western’ way, which follows the structure of the ABRSM and Trinity College London exams. The piano lessons typically take place once a week, and the theory part of learning has to be covered in that time too. In Poland we have specialised teachers for each instrument and for each theoretical subject. So in Ireland, I found myself in in my element, because I love theory of music!
After a year in Ireland, we decided to move to New Zealand, the most remote place I’ve ever been to! We said weepy goodbyes to our families, and before we knew it, we were looking thought an airplane window at the beautiful ‘land of the long white cloud’, our new home, Aotearoa New Zealand. We settled in Queenstown, and since we stepped off the plane, we haven’t stopped loving the outdoors, the mountains, the views, and the people here. I started teaching piano (and theory!) to local children and adults, and we became part of the community by supporting local charities, organising concert, events, personal development opportunities, participating in festivals, giving speeches, and lectures, holiday programmes, you name it!
In 2020, online piano lessons became a great way to connect, check with each other, and keep working towards our goals as we were going through the Covid pandemics. Together we survived the tough time, seeing each other online for our weekly piano lessons. I feel like after that our piano community became even stronger and more resilient.
In 2021 I was invited to join the National Council of the Institute of Registered Music Teachers New Zealand, to represent Otago. The Institute organises masterclasses, conferences and supports teachers in their professional development.
In 2022 I completed my Master of Musical Arts, with Dr Jian Liu, Victoria University flying to Wellington once a month. The time with my teachers gave me not only more musical skills and abilities, but also taught me a lot about myself, my learning processes, and most importantly about performance anxiety. Performance anxiety is something we all experience, but we seldom know how to deal with it. Understanding and handling performance anxiety became something I specialise in, while in uni, and afterwards, I’ve completed a lot of courses, tested a lot of concepts, and I love sharing my knowledge and experience with wider community whether it’s musicians or other performing artists. After I graduated my MMA with Distinction, I was offered a place to do a Doctorate degree, which I am considering pursuing it in the near future. My focus would be the performance anxiety.
Every year our piano students prepare 12 composers’ biographies for the Piano Calendar that we publish. I find it a great educational task for the students, creating engagement and openness to the wider sense of music. It also makes it all more tangible and relatable, and we can learn that all these composers were real men and women walking this earth like we are.
You can see our students performing at least twice a year, in June, and in December. Our Classical Christmas Piano Concert has been our big annual event since we started in 2018.
As you can see, there is always a lot going on, and we are open and very excited to connect with more people and organisations in our community.
Please follow us on social media and subscribe to our Newsletter to know what we’re up to, always reach out if you would like to learn more about the lessons and how to sign up, and we are looking forward to meeting you at one of our upcoming events!
Master of Musical Arts in Piano Performance
BMus(Hons) in Piano Performance and Teaching
BA(Hons) in History
Member of the National Council of the Institute of Registered Music Teachers New Zealand
Associate Member of IRMTNZ, registered teacher of Piano, Theory and Advanced Theory
Professional Pianist | Educator | Collaborative Pianist
