Nakayama Violin Studio

Our 2022 Violin Recital was a HUGE success! It is nothing but rewarding for us music teachers to see own students excel, perform so well on stage 💖 They all had a great time, and I am so proud of them!

Thank you parents, for your continuous support at home, encouraging them to practice. Practice and hard work never betray you!! 💪🎻🎖

2022 recital video

I hope everyone is safe!!!

We wanted to announce that our studio had a wonderful virtual recital yesterday🎻🎹 Everyone performed so well despite the circumstance. We had family audience viewing our zoom recital from all over the places - not only the Bay Area, but Arkansas, Montreal Canada, and Ireland ☺️ I am so grateful of all the parents & families who were supportive to our students 🙏 and hope everyone enjoyed watching them perform!

Performing in a recital is a great opportunity for children who practice musical instruments, to have them realize that music is to entertain listeners and warm the hearts of audience :) Not just to practice at home! I was so glad to have this opportunity yesterday to showcase each student's talent and hard work.

I would like to throw a recital again very soon as this is such a fun event! But hopefully this was the first and LAST one that we had to do virtually...

Great job for everyone who performed!! So proud of you!! 🎉👏

2020 Virtual Student Recital

Hello! I hope everyone is hanging in there during this crazy time!! I wanted to post a little update & announcement of my music studio :) 🎻🎻

Don't know where to begin...but thanks to support from people like you, I could build my studio to 15 students, since I started it in February 2019. All my students were enjoying their lessons, and I saw tremendous growth in each of them. I planned a "Spring Student Recital" in mid-March to showcase their performance. It was supposed to be a wonderful day filled with beautiful music, joy and happy faces of proud students and parents... Unfortunately, we had no choice but to cancel the event abruptly due to COVID-19 outbreak😢, followed by switching lessons to online. I've lost about 30% of students, but many of them wanted to keep lessons remotely, and I continue to see huge progress in each one of them!

I cannot thank ALL THE PARENTS of my current online students enough, to decide to continue with lessons and their warm support. Some parents even decided to increase the lesson length or have 2 lessons a week (thank you). Musicians are one of the professions that got impacted profoundly by this pandemic, with all our gigs and concerts being cancelled until the end of the year. We are facing a serious financial crisis to the point that we cannot even pay the rent. Some of my colleagues even consider moving back to their hometown as they can no longer afford the Bay Area's ridiculously high living expenses. That includes me too - with the uncertainty of how long we need to shut down our performance activities, I must give the option of moving back to Japan a serious thought. It is very scary not knowing what is the best thing to do....

SO, I NEED YOUR HELP!!! If you know anyone who is interested in taking online violin (or piano) lessons, please contact me! Now is actually a good time to learn musical instruments with all the free time at home. Playing music certainly gives you a peaceful break, from the chaos that's happening in this world now. Also practicing music is definitely better activity for your children than playing video games or watch tv all day!! I use ZOOM, SKYPE, GOOGLE HANGOUTS to provide remote lessons. But we could also try FACETIME, or any other apps that you prefer using. I spent the last month and a half trying to learn to teach my students online efficiently, and it is working great! My students are focused, listen to instructions well, and they continue to play their hearts out despite such an unconventional way of taking lessons. I feel grateful and fortunate to have amazing students like them ❤️

It is an incredibly challenging time for almost all of us. I hope everyone is staying safe and sane, and we can survive this by helping each other in the community. So, please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you need any support! Thank you for reading my post. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

Sincerely,
Midori Nakayama, violinist

Hello! This is kind of a last minute, but I'm hosting AND performing in a small concert at my residence, on Friday, 5/10/2019 from 7pm!!! It's called "groupmuse" and anyone can sign up to attend! I will perform with two of my colleagues and fantastic string players, Annamarie Arai (violin) & Gabriel Beistline (cello). The program is about 1 hour long, nice and short with lots of great music ☺️ Bring your own drinks, friends, and join our fun music night! Please go to the link below to sign yourself up, thank you!!

https://www.groupmuse.com/events/8436-string-trio-classical-to-modern-hits

I’m so grateful that a lot of people liked my page, all thanks to Lee Hsu, who is a father of Matthew, my former violin student, and the director of the Coder School, San Francisco. So excited to know the words are spread now to many wonderful families in the neighborhood, that I started my own teaching studio. I’m looking forward to offering lessons to many future students, to share the joy of playing this beautiful string instrument!

Some people say you must start violin from early age, at least 5~6 years old, but that is only true if you want to make it as a professional musician. You can essentially start whenever it interests you — just a little curiosity is enough to take on the new journey to start playing music. And the most important thing is, to HAVE FUN. In order to have fun, you will need be somewhat diligent learning the correct posture, set-ups and the basic techniques. I strongly believe one can truly enjoy violin once you cultivate the proper skills.

From my experience teaching violin for 15+ years, this has been my biggest challenge to make my students engaged in learning skills properly, but at the same time try to have them enjoy and not to overwhelm them with too many details. But the bigger the challenge, the more rewarding for us teachers. For example, I have one student (5 year-old girl) who worked so hard to play with her bow straight for the first 6 months, and now her bowing technique is almost perfect! And after such phase, everything came much easier for her to play songs, and all of the sudden her face lit up with joy!! Now she loves playing violin, her mother told me she practices everyday without her parents telling her to practice! To see my student’s face lighten up is enough for me to continue teaching, as that is the most rewarding moment. I am always amazed that young students can learn rather complicated techniques so fast and naturally.

One way to enjoy playing music is to play together with other students, or to perform in a recital setting. I am planning to expand my teaching idea to group classes, and hold neighborhood recitals, as my studio grows in size in the future. So it will be fun! I will keep all of you posted. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you again everyone :) :)

After students performance!