Lessons happen in a private studio in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, built around the instruments and tools of someone who plays for a living. Lamp-lit, lived-in, just you and the music.
A real acoustic piano sits at the center of the room. Next to it, a Fender Rhodes, the iconic electric piano you hear on every great jazz, soul, and R&B record from the ’70s onward. Behind that, a Hammond B3, the organ that defines gospel, soul, and post-bop jazz.
In-person students play all of it. Not as a tour. As part of regular lessons. If your jazz piano lesson is about voicings, we work them out on the acoustic piano. If it’s about how Herbie Hancock sounded on Headhunters, you sit at the Rhodes. If you’re working on a gospel-influenced R&B tune, the B3 is right there.
This isn’t a museum tour. The instruments are working tools, used during lessons whenever the music calls for them.
The studio has a real recording setup, microphones, keyboards, the ability to track and produce finished material. For most piano students, recording is available when it makes sense: a piece you’ve worked toward, an audition cut, something you want to send to a friend or hear back outside the moment.
For voice students, recording is integral. Listening back to your own voice is how voice work actually happens. You can’t hear yourself accurately while you’re singing. Reference recordings throughout the lesson are part of the process.
For musical theater audition prep, that means you can leave with clean recordings of your cuts, captured well enough to send to a college program or build into a finished take.
Reference recordings for self-review, clean tracks when something is ready to share. If you want to go deeper into production work, the studio supports that too.
Lessons are just you and me. Not a hallway of practice rooms. Not a teacher’s living room with kids running through. Not a music school with other students you can hear through the wall.
Most lessons happen in the afternoon and evening. The room is warm, lamp-lit, lived in, the kind of place where you can stop bracing for the rest of your day and actually pay attention to the music in front of you.
For an hour, the studio is the only thing happening. For a lot of students, that’s the part that makes the lesson work.
With three keyboards in the room, lessons aren’t a one-way demonstration. We trade. You play; I respond. You work out a voicing on the piano, I play it back from the Rhodes so you can hear it in context. We comp through a tune together, you on the changes, me on the bass figure.
For voice students, the same idea applies, I play, you sing, we adjust in real time. The studio is built so the teacher can be a working part of the lesson, not just a guide standing over your shoulder.
This is what the institutional setting can’t easily give you. A practice-room teacher with a single piano can demonstrate. A working studio with multiple instruments lets you actually play the music.
Lessons are in person at the studio. When you’re traveling or under the weather, that week’s lesson moves to Zoom: same teacher, same rate, same Mon–Thu, 3–9pm schedule. You’ll need a quiet space, a phone or laptop angled to capture your hands or your face, and headphones if possible.
The studio sits at Erie & Hoyne in Ukrainian Village. Full address and door instructions go out by email after your trial or first lesson is booked, or email Nick if you want directions first.
10-minute walk from the Division Blue Line stop. Closer to Bucktown / Wicker Park than the Loop.
The #66 Chicago stops at Hoyne, half a block away. The #50 Damen is a 5-min walk.
Street parking is usually open on Hoyne and Erie. The Damen exit off the 90/94 expressway is the quickest way in.
Mariano's at Damen and Smith Park are a few blocks away. St. Nicholas Cathedral is the most visible landmark in the neighborhood.
Neighborhoods within easy reach: Ukrainian Village · Wicker Park · Bucktown · West Town · Noble Square · Humboldt Park · East Village.