Testimonials
Susan is the best piano teacher ever!
For five years, Susan has been a wonderful teacher to our daughter, Lauren. She truly inspires her students to enjoy learning and to love music. Susan's love, passion and dedication to music is apparent and evident in her teaching. Her students perform with great skill and excitement at her year-end productions, complete with a full script, musical score, stage props, costumes and makeup.
Susan is fun, caring and nurturing, yet professional and motivating. She recognizes students’ musical potential and gently steers them to where they need to be through a variety of music as well as solid music theory instruction. An outstanding pianist herself, one of Susan’s strongest assets is that she teaches students not just to play piano, but to play it musically.
The bottom line is our daughter looked forward to her piano lessons each week and even her practices! Over the years, Susan became more than our piano teacher—she is a friend to our family, someone we both admire and care about, and I highly recommend her to anyone who wants to learn to play the piano.
Judy McInnes
For five years, Susan has been a wonderful teacher to our daughter, Lauren. She truly inspires her students to enjoy learning and to love music. Susan's love, passion and dedication to music is apparent and evident in her teaching. Her students perform with great skill and excitement at her year-end productions, complete with a full script, musical score, stage props, costumes and makeup.
Susan is fun, caring and nurturing, yet professional and motivating. She recognizes students’ musical potential and gently steers them to where they need to be through a variety of music as well as solid music theory instruction. An outstanding pianist herself, one of Susan’s strongest assets is that she teaches students not just to play piano, but to play it musically.
The bottom line is our daughter looked forward to her piano lessons each week and even her practices! Over the years, Susan became more than our piano teacher—she is a friend to our family, someone we both admire and care about, and I highly recommend her to anyone who wants to learn to play the piano.
Judy McInnes
I would highly recommend Susan's ideas to aid in adding interest to your teaching studio. I have been using her plans for years and each teaching aid has created interest for my students. Children are eager to complete goals and are motivated to practice . They have fun and are progressing. As a teacher I am always looking for new ideas to motivate and Susan's are the best.
Shirley Schepp piano, vocal, and theory teacher Carvel Alberta.
Shirley Schepp piano, vocal, and theory teacher Carvel Alberta.
My children took piano lessons from Sue Stanger for many, many years. After experiencing a more regimented approach to piano lessons (theory books, scales, Royal Conservatory exams, and formal recitals), learning from and with Sue was like a breath of fresh air.
There is no doubt about it. Sue absolutely loves piano, teaching and being with children. She passed on her love of music to my children with her creative and wonderfully adept method of instruction.
Sue teaches using a very clever, thematic approach. Every year has an overarching theme to it.like "Come Fly Away", or "The Treasure Hunt", or my son's favourite, "Musical Bingo".
No matter what the skill-level of the child, they can participate in the theme and in the theme parties that are actually small performance recitals in front of their peers—but kids see them completely as the celebrations of learning that they are.
Along with games and performances, the theme parties happened throughout the year for my children, and every other year they would culminate in a grand musical theatre production that would involve adults with the students using techniques like dueling pianos. Sue's thematic method provided for my children a vehicle for introducing music that they otherwise wouldn't select for themselves, and doing so without it seeming to be a chore, be it the music of the masters, historical styles or the music of the movies.
Game-playing is a big part of Sue's teaching repertoire. It was that infusion of fun that helped my children learn the theory behind the music, without even realizing that they were working hard.
I'll never forget a very special project that she did with her students. By teaching them the theory behind chording, and by exploring the emotionality and the atmosphere of various musical pieces, she taught them how to write their very own music!
Her students ended up creating musical pieces with many movements in them. These were surprisingly complex for the ages of the children. At the end of the year each child put together a slideshow of photographs that captured the emotion and the settings behind each movement of his or her piano piece. This single project made the children feel like virtuosos no matter what their skill level. It instilled confidence and pride in them, and it made practicing the piano not a chore, but a creative exercise.
And that, in a nutshell is Sue's gift—she makes learning fun. She draws out the creativity that is inherent in every child. Her methods instill in each child that she comes in contact with, a lifelong love of music.
S. Hendsbee
There is no doubt about it. Sue absolutely loves piano, teaching and being with children. She passed on her love of music to my children with her creative and wonderfully adept method of instruction.
Sue teaches using a very clever, thematic approach. Every year has an overarching theme to it.like "Come Fly Away", or "The Treasure Hunt", or my son's favourite, "Musical Bingo".
No matter what the skill-level of the child, they can participate in the theme and in the theme parties that are actually small performance recitals in front of their peers—but kids see them completely as the celebrations of learning that they are.
Along with games and performances, the theme parties happened throughout the year for my children, and every other year they would culminate in a grand musical theatre production that would involve adults with the students using techniques like dueling pianos. Sue's thematic method provided for my children a vehicle for introducing music that they otherwise wouldn't select for themselves, and doing so without it seeming to be a chore, be it the music of the masters, historical styles or the music of the movies.
Game-playing is a big part of Sue's teaching repertoire. It was that infusion of fun that helped my children learn the theory behind the music, without even realizing that they were working hard.
I'll never forget a very special project that she did with her students. By teaching them the theory behind chording, and by exploring the emotionality and the atmosphere of various musical pieces, she taught them how to write their very own music!
Her students ended up creating musical pieces with many movements in them. These were surprisingly complex for the ages of the children. At the end of the year each child put together a slideshow of photographs that captured the emotion and the settings behind each movement of his or her piano piece. This single project made the children feel like virtuosos no matter what their skill level. It instilled confidence and pride in them, and it made practicing the piano not a chore, but a creative exercise.
And that, in a nutshell is Sue's gift—she makes learning fun. She draws out the creativity that is inherent in every child. Her methods instill in each child that she comes in contact with, a lifelong love of music.
S. Hendsbee