A Diverse International Music Institute

The best part of being here and leading this institute/school is the fact that it is truly international. We have people coming for music lessons from all over the world, from places like Spain, Latvia, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, USA and so on...

This poses unique challenges for us as our teacher team is required to speak at least two languages - English alongside their native language (none of our teachers are English/American). Also, we must not only be good educators on our respective instruments, but must be good communicators as well as empathic and culturally aware in order to achieve good to great outcomes. 

We had an interesting thing happen last year during our winter term concert when our Indonesian young girl student performed on stage. She is a very talented violin student and a cute girl. However, she made two mistakes in one of her performance pieces. We assume this was the reason that the parents decided to stop with the lessons for a semester. She eventually found her way back to us convincing the parents to continue, so all's well that ends well. In our culture, making mistakes is a part of life, we learn from them and fix them, and do better next time. That is what makes us human. For Asian cultures, the whole thing can be deadly serious (add to the fact that this girl will probably not end up being a musician...).

We love to work with high achievers, not just hobbyist levels, but in life there always needs to be a balance and outcomes must always be achieved in a realistic manner as there are no shortcuts.

Still, the stories are mostly positive, and it is always fascinating to see a mix of cultures here at our school and to see that everyone can get along well and work on a common purpose together!  

As a counter example, we have a Chinese-American family here who are all taking music lessons with us. While they are also perfectionists, they have a positive outlook and are always supporting each other and the work of the teachers as well. No wonder, that they are achieving fantastic milestones. A few years ago they even performed songs together on stage at our end of year concert. That was a memorable event full of great performances. The end of year concerts always feel like big celebrations when the hard work truly pays off. And if there are a few note mistakes sometimes? Nobody remembers them, only the performances as a whole. Because that's what matters in the end!

 


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