@Pallas I know we’ve chatted a little about this privately, but I’d echo @twocats ’s perspective about a lot of certified Taubman people. I have a Taubman teacher, and I think a lot of people got to Taubman because of serious injuries that could have been career-ending. So they’re people who have had to confront major problems in their own playing at some point. The certification process is quite extensive, so the people who are certified are really committed—and not just to improving and growing in their own playing but also to sharing this with others. I think all of this culminates in a teaching approach that is pretty non-judgmental and very optimistic about what can be done. Problems are there to be solved, and the teacher is there to analyze why you’re having the problem and help you find solutions, not to just to point out problems.
I will also say, I don’t know if this is universal or particularly common with Taubman instructors, but my personal experience is that lessons are driven a lot more by me than lessons with other teachers I can remember. What I mean by this is that most lessons are focused on issues that I have identified and bring to class. Perhaps one way of thinking about this is that preparing for class, for me, is largely about identifying the areas that don’t feel or sound right, that I want help with, as opposed to just doing the things from the last lesson and then playing it again for the teacher and seeing what he has to say. The questions can be technical or musical, and often they’re both… ‘I want to do X with this passage, but it’s just not working.’ Sometimes the fixes are easy and go in very easily. Other times, they’re bigger issues that may take a few lessons to fully sort out. Anyways, I find the approach very helpful, and I think it provides a really good framework for thinking about how to solve problems at the piano.
