Susan Capestro earned a traditional piano pedagogy degree from Northwestern University, and also studied jazz extensively with Charlie Banacos. She enjoys teaching both traditional piano repertoire and contemporary improvisational styles of music, so that they complement and enhance each other in the student's curriculum. The name she has give to this synergistic way of teaching is integral keyboard teaching.

Integral keyboard teaching can best be described as a creativity-based approach, centering around having the student find his or her own musical voice. It synergistically combines the best of current and proven piano pedagogy approaches to music reading with the most successful learning techniques used by jazz and popular keyboardists. It emphasizes structural understanding, and makes use of music from various traditions from around the globe.

For important information about piano learning materials and my approach to teaching music reading, please see articles in my "Resources" category.

For more about Integral Keyboard Teaching, please visit my site devoted to this topic, http://www.wholemusiclessons.com. -Susan Capestro