Private jazz piano instruction with a working jazz pianist, Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition winner, AJPC Bösendorfer Award, APA Alternate. Whether you’re brand new to improvisation or already deep in the standards, lessons meet you where you are.
You want to sit down at a piano and actually make something up, not just play what’s written on the page. Jazz is the language for that, and like any language, it’s learned by speaking it.
Real jazz piano study moves between the same things that working players think about every day: how chords actually function, how voicings evolved from stride through bebop into modern, how to hear what’s happening in a tune in real time, and how to respond instead of just playing prepared lines.
Every student lands somewhere different on that map. A complete beginner might spend the first month getting comfortable with major and minor seventh chords and walking through “Autumn Leaves.” An intermediate player who’s read changes for years but never improvised confidently might focus on rhythmic vocabulary and motivic development. An experienced classical pianist crossing over for the first time might work on the relationship between voice leading they already know and the harmony they want to learn.
Lessons at the in-person studio happen on a real acoustic piano, with a Fender Rhodes in the room when the music calls for it. The Rhodes is the iconic electric piano of jazz from the ’70s onward, not a digital approximation, the actual instrument. More on the studio →
Jazz piano study leans heavily on the standards repertoire because that’s the literature working musicians use to communicate. We’ll learn tunes, not as memorized arrangements but as harmonic and melodic frameworks you can move around in. We’ll work on transcribing solos by ear because that’s where the language actually lives. And we’ll spend real time on the question of what you sound like, what your particular musical voice is, separate from imitation.
This is one of the things that working jazz musicians teach differently than career educators. The goal isn’t to become a smaller version of someone else. It’s to find what’s yours.
“Nicholas was an absolutely wonderful piano instructor for our young daughters. He was incredibly personable, patient, and fun to work with…”
If you can read a chord chart or read music at any level (classical, pop, anything), you're ready. Jazz piano builds on existing skills. Complete beginners are usually better served starting with adult piano lessons first.
Yes, starting with target notes, basic vocabulary, and the most common standards. Real improvisation is a lifelong skill, but you'll leave with the building blocks and the confidence to play something that wasn't written down.
Your pick, within reason. Common first tunes are Autumn Leaves, Misty, Blue Bossa, All The Things You Are, Body and Soul, classics that teach the essentials and that you'll actually use at sessions or for yourself.
No. Theory comes in as we need it, chord function, voice leading, modal substitution, always in service of music you're actively playing, not abstract drills.
Both. Early on, the music has training wheels. Within a few months, certain things land: a real voicing, a real lick, a real bossa pattern. That's the part that hooks people.
In person, with the Rhodes and B3 in the room and the chance to play together on a real acoustic piano. Zoom covers the weeks you're traveling or under the weather. Same rate, same teacher.