About Zuzana Lenartova
I gave my first piano lesson when I was 18, although by then I had already spent many years sitting on the other side of the piano.
Some of my own lessons taught me what a good teacher can make possible. Others taught me what I would never want to repeat.
Today, I teach adults from my studio in Bondi Junction and online across Australia. Some are touching a piano for the first time. Some played years ago and have decided it is time to come back. Others are preparing for an exam, an audition or a performance, or working on music they have wanted to play for years.
They arrive with different experience, different hands and different amounts of time available to practise. My work begins with finding out what is happening for the person in front of me.
Where It Began
I grew up in Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia, and studied piano from childhood.
My first piano teacher was strict in ways that would not be accepted now. If I played something incorrectly, she would sometimes strike my fingers with a ruler. I went to lessons in tears and often left the same way.
It did not put me off the piano, fortunately. It did teach me that knowing music is not enough to make someone a good teacher.
A teacher needs to notice when a student is anxious, frustrated or trying very hard to disguise the fact that they have forgotten everything they could play perfectly well at home. Correction matters, but so does the way it is given.
That early experience has stayed with me throughout my teaching life.
From Slovakia to Sydney
I trained at the State Conservatory of Music in Košice, completing degrees in Piano Performance and teaching. I later completed a master’s degree in Musicology and Pedagogy at Comenius University in Bratislava.
Before leaving Slovakia, I taught at the Conservatory of Jozef Adamovič Conservatory in Košice. I was also involved in concert programming with the State Philharmonic Orchestra Košice and wrote music and performance reviews.
In 2000, I moved to Sydney on my own. I had a few hundred dollars, limited English and no piano.
For a pianist, the last of these was a particularly inconvenient problem.
I found a music shop owner who allowed me to pay to practise on a spare piano in her showrooms. While studying English and taking whatever work I could find, I also began teaching.
That was the beginning of my musical life in Australia.
Building a Teaching Practice in Sydney
Soon after arriving, I established Eastern Suburbs Piano Tuition.
It began as a small teaching practice and eventually grew to include more than 30 professional teachers, providing lessons to several hundred students across different ages and stages of learning.
Running the school taught me a great deal about matching teachers and students, supporting other music educators and recognising that there is no single correct way into music.
I sold Eastern Suburbs Piano Tuition in 2013. In 2016, I founded Piano Promise so I could return my attention to the part of teaching I most wanted to explore: working closely with adult students.
Why I Teach Adults
Adults are at the piano because they have chosen to be there.
That does not necessarily make them easier to teach.
Adults want to know why a fingering works, how a note should be played and how long something is likely to take. They bring curiosity, strong musical preferences and years of experience from other parts of their lives.
They can also be remarkably self-conscious.
Many apologise before they have played more than a few notes. Almost every adult student has told me at some point that they played it much better at home. One student eventually informed me that she could play it better on her piano, provided I was not there.
At least that version was confident.
I understand that playing for a teacher can feel exposing. You do not need to impress me. I need to hear what is happening so that we can work out why and decide what to do next.
Encouragement With Honest Correction
I want students to leave a lesson feeling encouraged, but I do not believe encouragement means pretending everything is correct.
If the rhythm is wrong, I will tell you. If the fingering is making a passage unnecessarily difficult, we will change it. If you are rushing into a piece before you have stopped to listen, I may ask you to take a breath and begin again.
I will also explain what I am hearing and give you a practical way to work on it.
Adults often have limited time to practise. That makes it even more important to know what you are trying to achieve when you sit at the piano. Playing a whole piece repeatedly is not always practice. Sometimes the most useful work happens in two uncertain bars.
Lessons are serious because music deserves attention. They do not need to be solemn.
Music Beyond the Teaching Studio
Teaching has always been at the centre of my work, but it has led me into some unexpected places.
Do Re Mi To You
I wrote Do Re Mi To You after years of answering questions from adult students about practice, technique, theory, confidence and exams. It gives learners a way to revisit those ideas outside their lesson and understand more of what they are doing at the piano.
Television Work
I also work as a piano coach and consultant for film and television. For the Netflix series Pieces of Her, I coached actor Jessica Barden and performed the piano passages shown on screen as her piano double, including Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2.
In the Media
My teaching and adult students have also been featured in Good Weekend with The Sydney Morning Herald and Wentworth Courier.
I continue to mentor piano teachers at different stages of their careers, from people preparing to teach their first students to experienced teachers wanting another perspective on their work.
Still Learning
I have now spent more than 25 years teaching in Sydney and more years at the piano than away from it.
I still notice something new nearly every week.
It may be something in a familiar piece, a question I have not been asked before, or a solution that works for one student when the usual explanation does not. That is one of the reasons I have never become tired of teaching.
The piano keeps asking for attention. So do the people who play it.
Where Are You Now?
You may be beginning, returning after many years or looking for help with a particular piece or goal.
Tell me where you are, and we will find a sensible place to start.
Lessons are available at my Bondi Junction studio and online across Australia.