Colin T. — Piano Teacher — Downtown Toronto, Toronto

Colin Tucker is a pianist and cellist who holds a PhD from the University at Buffalo (SUNY), an MPhil from the University of Huddersfield, and a BM summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, all in music. As a performer, Colin has performed at leading venues locally (Nuit Blanche, U of T) and internationally (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Stanford University, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Fridman Gallery, Memorial Art Gallery-University of Rochester), and worked as organist & pianist at Faith United Church of Christ in Amherst, NY. Prior to joining Musiprof, Colin taught piano and music theory at the University at Buffalo, and maintained a private piano studio in Buffalo, NY.

Through teaching, I hope to equip students with the skills which can support their lifelong joy in music-making. In instrumental music teaching, I emphasize holistic attention to posture, movement, and tension, as these aspects of playing are often the most impactful to adjust. From an interdisciplinary body of knowledge (a classical performance background together with studies in somatics and experimental music), I highlight strategies for kinaesthetic and aural awareness which can support students' journeys towards fluency--and ultimately joy--in performance. I also distill these strategies into concrete practice techniques which can facilitate students' ownership over their learning and maximize the efficacy of their practice time. In composition teaching, I emphasize each student's development of a unique voice, and of a suite of techniques aligned with that voice. Concretely, I cultivate students' awareness of how to nurture the particular world emerging in a given piece-in-progress; I emphasize this regardless of style, and I draw on a wide repertoire knowledge (Western art music, jazz/creative music, pop music, experimental music, sound art) to support students who want to pursue any combination or conversation between these approaches to composition.