Music House

What causes so many musical children to become non-musical adults?

Here’s an unusual perspective on the problem and how we might solve it.
My presentation at the Music Teachers National Association Conference, 2025:

Music House: an engagement model for music lessons Have you ever wondered why traditional music lessons fail so many people? Meryl Danziger, the creator of Music House, offers another way to look at music lea...

This could be the find of the century.

My friend in NYC needs to part with her gorgeous Knabe apartment-grand piano. In very good condition and the price is negotiable. If you’d like more details please pm me ASAP!

Yes!!!

"The one quality that characterizes all the teaching I have done, public teaching, or quality I have tried for is always to be talking above the music and showing the music, and to get as far away as possible from what is usually called ‘music appreciation,’ which is the birds-and-bees department, and vague generalizations which are made about the music."
-Leonard Bernstein (Life Magazine, October 24, 1958)

~~~Eight year-old Sam arrives at Music House for his weekly private music lesson. He greets his teacher, then scoots by her; something is on his mind. Sam dims the lights. He takes an assortment of percussion instruments off the shelf – a tambourine, claves, maracas and a triangle – and methodically lays them out in a row on the couch. “There are finger cymbals if you need them,” says his teacher. “Oh yeah!” Sam locates the cymbals and places them next to the triangle. He chooses a CD, “Selections from the Nutcracker,” puts it in the CD player and presses Play. Sam takes his place on a little box in front of the long mirror and, as the music fills the room, he conducts his invisible orchestra, swaying, cueing, rapture on his face. When Sam loses track of the beat, his teacher silently models the pattern and Sam adjusts. Occasionally he will lunge for a triangle or tambourine and hit it at just the right moment, then fly back to the “podium” where the New York Philharmonic awaits his next cue. His teacher looks on, smiling.~~~

Suppose there were a way to tailor music learning to the needs, interests, innate musical inclination, learning style, readiness? What would this require of the teacher, how would it look, and what might the outcome be?

For an introduction to a groundbreaking approach to music learning, please visit my webisite, blog and Music House pages: https://www.meryldanziger.com/

“I wish I could convey to you the excitement and insane joy of it [creating], which nothing else touches - not making love, not that wonderful glass of orange juice in the morning; nothing! Nothing touches the extraordinary, jubilant sensation of being caught up in this thing - so that you're not just inside yourself, not just lying there.

Let’s say that you get an idea and you go to the piano and you start with it; and you don’t know what you’re going to do next, and then you’re doing something else next, and you can’t stop doing the next things, and you know why. It's madness and it's marvelous. There's nothing in the world like it.”

Leonard Bernstein
University of Chicago, 1957

What could be the connection between these two objects?
Find out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6k4KFCyu9k

Need a 5-min. break from whatever you're up to? Check out my invention: The Musical Imagery Transformer!

Hills and Valleys: Teaching Music Through Imagery This presentation will demonstrate a unique way to introduce musical concepts through relatable imagery using the Musical Imagery Transformer: a "machine" th...

My "Lightning" video submission, "Hills and Valleys: Teaching music through imagery," was chosen by the NY Music Teachers Association to be shown at their upcoming Symposium.

Originally conceived as an hour-long presentation for Carnegie Hall's 2019 Music Educators Summer Workshop, the challenge was to pare it down to a 5-min. video. A good exercise, but could such a thing possibly work? If you have 5-min., see for yourself!

Hills and Valleys: Teaching Music Through Imagery This presentation will demonstrate a unique way to introduce musical concepts through relatable imagery using the Musical Imagery Transformer: a "machine" th...