Play Keyboard With Jo

Testimonial from Aby Vulliamy (parent and music therapist) and her daughter Poppy

“Jo has about 20 years experience as a keyboard teacher, so we had high expectations! Jo is absolutely brilliant; she has a huge range of skills and techniques and knowledge up her sleeves, she’s friendly and enthusiastic and encouraging, and strikes a delicate balance between revelling in children’s achievements and making sure they enjoy their lessons whilst also stretching and challenging them and building really secure foundations of musical education.  Jo has created loads of funny and clever resources for learning to read music, which really help during lessons and when students are practicing at home. She’s got tonnes of fun musical games so that students don’t even notice that they’re being challenged and learning new rhythm, melody, harmony skills because they’re busy enjoying the games.

In Jo’s online sharing event for all of her students, we saw the great relationships she develops with all her students, how sensitively and effectively she communicates with different children who have different personalities and different strengths. It was clear that each child felt special and unique and valued by Jo and proud of their performances at the event.  

Jo is creating loads of really good all-round musicians, by approaching her teaching holistically, thinking about the individual needs, desires and personalities of each student, working on a really healthy balance of music theory, notation, plus rhythm games, singing melodies, improvising, composing, playing by ear, sight reading – everything.

Jo is the perfect keyboard teacher for our daughter Poppy. She started learning online with Jo during lockdown, thinking we’d find an in-person teacher when lockdown finished (we live too far from Jo) but it’s working out brilliantly online, and we can’t imagine changing teachers now. Pops is very proud of what she’s achieving with Jo, and this has been great for her confidence as a learner more generally (Pops has an Education Health Care Plan at school so finds some learning difficult). Poppy takes a bit longer than some people to absorb information and Jo is beautifully patient and sensitive in the ways she helps Poppy to understand and communicate. Jo has an incredible memory for the riffs that Poppy composes, and she’s brilliant at helping her to develop them into fuller songs, often using both hands and helping Poppy to create lyrics that fit the rhythms. Poppy is really motivated, inspired and excited by the progress she’s making, and it’s wonderful to see.”