Musicians today need to be very flexible. One day they are playing in an orchestra, the other day they are conducting a community ensemble, writing arrangements for a wedding reception, or applying for a grant. What that means for college music students is that they will need to learn how to be flexible before they graduate. Although extra musical elements are immensely important, I believe that music students need, first of all, to develop their musical and technical skills. For cellists, that means intonation work, developing a good sound quality, being able to work in a group (chamber music and orchestra), and being fluent in as many different styles and genres as possible.

Teaching how to practice is my number one concern. I frame my lessons as a condensed practice session. Students learn how to stretch, how to warm-up, and how to approach technical exercises. With the repertoire, the approach is twofold: first, how to break it apart and treat the difficult spots as technical exercises; second, how to put everything back together and form a coherent musical narrative. Because not every student benefited from having a private instructor from a young age, many of them come to college not knowing what to do in a practice room.

Eventually, my goal is to provide them with the tools they need to become their own teachers, in which case my role switches from teacher to colleague. A student that comes to a lesson and waits that all the answers will come from me is not moving towards their emancipation as learners. That is why I avoid giving all the answers, and take a “horizontal” approach: asking questions back at the students and making them reflect on what they are trying to achieve. In some cases, this type of approach is fruitful and I see that students slowly learn how to locate and solve problems by themselves. In other cases, I need to act more vertically, showing students what their problems are and how to effectively solve them.

My role as a teacher is to make sure that my students will leave school with a well-developed musical and technical vocabulary. Also, I don’t believe students will leave school with all the tools they need, but with the skills to develop new tools for any adverse situation they might find themselves in. And even though I focus on their musicality and technique, I make sure that they are familiar with most extra musical aspects of a musician’s life: how to write a formal email, how to treat colleagues and superiors, how to write grants, job application letters, among other things.