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Michelle Saacks Music

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Music Lessons

Michelle Saacks music lessons incorporate all the important elements of musical instruction to create a well-rounded, self-aware and content musician. Using a combination of traditional techniques and her own experiences as a mother, professional musician and music teacher, Michelle allows each student to develop into an individual musician rather than a pupil of Michelle Saacks. With the children, Michelle encourages them to try the other instruments that are in the studio and will accompany them on a variety of instruments. Michelle can teach at the home of a student, but most lessons and classes are conducted in her Upper West Side studio in Manhattan, NYC.

Michelle explains her process:
I really work with each individual so differently. I start with what they bring to the class - a couple of questions at the beginning of the lesson gives me a sense of where they are; their mood, their level of concentration, what they have worked on during the week, what they'd like to accomplish in the lesson.

It's a very global approach that requires me to be entirely on top of each student's progress and goals. I want them to progress in an organic way. My job in the long run is to create a well rounded, listening and educated musician who is not scared to experiment and add their own seasoning to the pot when it comes to performing, creating or improvising a piece of music.

With the smaller kids, it's really a very intuitive approach toward each child - the kids definitely learn to read and to understand music but my first goal is to have them love it and feel a connection with the music they are making. The music theory develops because either they have made something up and want to communicate it to another musician or they want to read something."

My recitals are a very ambitious attempt to have each performer share their musicality with the audience of their fellow students and their families. It's important to me that each performer makes that conscious decision to share and is joyful in it. It is anathema to me that so many people grow up having been forced into dry and programmed courses of study and terrifying recitals that resemble a visit to the dentist. If you asked me for one phrase to describe what I want to give each of my students it would be ''joy in music''.