My goal as a teacher is to produce students who make progress at the fastest rate possible for each. For some students, this means simply learning new works and expanding their technical capabilities more efficiently than they would otherwise. For more motivated students, this entails a radical improvement in their playing to the point where successful competitive playing, from international competitions to orchestral auditions, can be a realistic goal. Most of all, for every student, my aim is to have them improve – much more swiftly than they ever would without guidance, and hopefully even more swiftly than if they studied elsewhere – by teaching them how to practice efficiently, intelligently and rationally.

My general beliefs about teaching come from the years I have spent working with students of all ages and all levels, from preschoolers to adults, from beginners to players aspiring to the highest levels of competition playing and professional careers. These beliefs are also informed by my observations of the educational methods and results in the US in comparison with the methods and results of other countries, most notably Russia's outstanding conservatories of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The first, and possibly most fundamental, belief that my observations and experiences have instilled in me is that no teacher, however gifted, can ever force learning into a pupil who is not receptive and who does not earnestly seek out that knowledge. The teacher is a resource, and should be used as such. After all, no person would expect a gold mine to spontaneously mine itself. It is essential for students to participate actively in their own learning by being careful listeners and seekers of knowledge rather than passive recipients of it. For it is when students ask for clarification, when they direct the teacher's attention to areas that give them exceptional difficulty and apply new information from the lesson in the practice room, that a collaboration between an enthusiastic student and an experienced, knowledgeable teacher produces results that are nothing short of startling.

The second tenet of my teaching philosophy is that musical training – that is, training to become a competent, musically literate professional – is no more mysterious than car engine repair. Nonetheless, this training often becomes obscured behind a sort of maudlin mysticism, as a result of which many aspects of practicing and performing take on an aura of faith rather than reason. My goal, by contrast, is to show students practice methods which fix specific problems by means other than mindless repetition and hopes for improvement. Furthermore, I always seek to explain as clearly as possible the underlying principles of both the specific error and the exercise designed to correct it.

My final conviction regarding teaching concerns performance. While I do not believe that the highest aspects of artistry can be taught, I do believe that students' acquisition of musical fluency can be accomplished by surrounding them with good examples of such professionalism. The height of artistry is more than the sum of its parts and, as such, it cannot be transmitted piece-by-piece with the reductionist approach that is so useful for specific technical issues. I do believe in the existence of talent – and that it is the presence of talent which separates the artist from the journeyman – but talent is not necessary for the competent instrumental mastery necessary to obtain professional employment. Anyone with functioning hands and ears can be trained to attain competence on a musical instrument, if he or she truly desires such an accomplishment and collaborates with the teacher towards that goal. My goal as a teacher is to help them on that journey to the best of my ability and of theirs.