About Me

ABOUT TRICIA

Hello! Here’s a bit of personal info about me, to give you a feel for how the work you’ve been perusing on this website emerges from who I am, what I love and care about, and what moves me to action.

First things first,

And then working backwards…

I’m a mother of two sons, mother-in-law to their wives, and wife to Eric, my partner of fifteen years. A piano teacher, pianist, writer of books, editor, and freelance journalist. A longtime arts education activist in Maplewood, NJ, my hometown of thirty-something years, and a co-founder of the Maplewood Arts Council. And, it should be mentioned, still a proud member of the March 12th Book Group, founded with friends in 1993.

My thirty-some years as a piano teacher have taught me that the individual music lesson can be a deeply moving, adventurous, and transformative space—hence my first book, Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson. I’ve also enjoyed the robust satisfactions and challenges of teaching public school music and college courses in music theory and appreciation

For the last decade, I’ve loved traveling to many countries across the world to witness, support, and write about the extraordinary initiatives across the world dedicated to youth development and empowerment through ensemble music-making. I’ve visited dozens of such programs, and they’re sprouting and growing everywhere. As a result of this crash course in the astonishing powers of arts education, I wrote Changing Lives and, with Eric, co-wrote Playing for Their Lives. My freelance journalism, as well, has often focused on this theme.

An earlier life in New York City was all about working an office job while publishing short stories, writing pop songs, and writing lyrics for musicals, jazz songs, and children’s videos in partnership with my first husband, a composer. (Hence the stylistically wide range of the sampling of songs I’ve included here.)

Going way back: I earned my B.A. in philosophy at Yale, as part of its second class of women; attended Manhattan School of Music as part of its master’s degree program in Accompanying; earned an M.A. in Historical Musicology from Columbia University.

With the advent of online education, I was able to earn a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in music education from Boston University. That “CAGS” was fairly recent (I was older than most of my teachers).

Which brings me back around to the present, when some late-breaking performance opportunities have elbowed their way into my already full schedule: I’m playing with a friend as a four-hands piano duo and with the newly formed all-female pop trio Broadband.