Breth Piano Studio

Photo by Stanley Staniski

I was four years old when I took my first piano lesson in Spokane, Washington from Mr. Jacques, a blind man who taught four members of my family in exchange for two hours of daily practice time on our 1899 Chickering. This patient man was the first of a series of excellent teachers in my life. The most influential was my high school teacher, Margaret Saunders Ott, herself a student of Olga Samaroff Stokowski at The Julliard School in New York. I taught my first piano lesson under Mrs. Ott’s guidance when I was 16. She is now in her 90’s, still teaches on occasion, and remains my close friend and mentor.

Spokane, then as now, boasts a remarkable week-long music festival with distinguished adjudicators from around the country. When I was a high school student, one of these master teachers, Bela Nagy, so inspired me that I determined to attend Indiana University in order to become his student. I also studied with the revered pianist Gyorgy Sebok, accompanied in Janos Starker’s studio, and was admitted into the chamber music class taught jointly by Sebok, Starker and Joseph Gingold. Discovering chamber music under these great artists was an electrifying experience. Though I went on to earn a Masters degree in solo piano under Carroll Chilton at the University of Wisconsin, my real love by that time was chamber music.

In the years following I performed in chamber music concerts with outstanding professional musicians everywhere I lived: the Philippines, Mexico, New York and Washington DC.

My 1980’s move into the Washington DC area coincided with a growing interest in teaching after all the years dedicated to performance. I joined the faculty of the Levine School of Music where I taught piano, piano pedagogy and chamber music and became director of the chamber music program. At the same time I opened a piano studio in Northern Virginia, an area rich in dedicated, music loving families and in brilliant piano teachers who generously shared their expertise with newcomers like me.

Over the years, as I gained experience, I put my ideas and the traditions passed to me by my teachers and colleagues into publications for other teachers’ use. My Piano Student’s Guide to Effective Practicing and Parent’s Guide to Effective Practicing are published by Hal Leonard Corporation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over 40,000 copies of the former are in use in the US and abroad.

I have contributed articles and reviews to American Music Teacher, Keyboard Companion, and Clavier Magazine. Hal Leonard also publishes my piano trio setting of Six Songs from John Gay’s Beggars Opera, the initial publication in Hal Leonard’s Beginning Chamber Music series.

I have given lecture-demonstrations on various aspects of pianism and musicianship at the national conference of Music Teachers National Association, in Los Angeles, St Louis, Memphis and San Diego, at Maryland State Music Teachers Conference, for regional teacher associations in Virginia and Maryland, at the Smithsonian Institution, and in my own studio.