Feedback from students past and present
“Viv is such a kind and patient teacher. I’ve seen her working with people from four years old through to seventy plus, from absolute beginners to experienced, talented players. She is creative and imaginative in her teaching style and adapts how she works to the individual needs of the person she is working with.”
“I cannot recommend Viv highly enough. I started learning the violin at the age of six and before coming to Viv rapidly went through a progression of teachers who forced me to learn pieces and scales in a metronomic, dull and joyless fashion. This almost led to me giving up the violin but that was before I came to Viv.
In my first lesson it was clear that she was different she asked me what I’d like to learn and that mantra (no matter how difficult the piece) was how she taught me for the next twelve years. Due to her unerring commitment, friendly manner and willingness to embrace my musical interests, I continued weekly lessons with her all the way through my teenage years and it wasn’t until I went to University that I sadly let it slip. Over the years Viv became more than just a teacher she became a very close friend during my teenage years. I still look back on our lessons with profound fondness and will always recommend Viv to any parents looking for a passionate and profoundly human teacher who can deal with the short attention span (still an issue) of a boy who just wanted to learn the music he loved to listen to.
Along the way I picked up many of my grades but by the end I was confident enough to just show up with a piece of sheet music of something I’d heard on Classic FM that I wanted to learn. Bar by bar we’d learn it no matter how difficult it was (Vivaldi’s winter etc.). That encouragement and the belief that teaching is fundamentally about triggering and developing the interests of the student lies at the heart of Viv’s teaching method. If all of my teachers at school, or indeed the education system as a whole, embraced this philosophy our society would be enormously better off for it.
I am now a lawyer in my mid-thirties but I can honestly say that the years learning the violin with Viv were some of the happiest of my life to date. She is a truly wonderful teacher and more than that she is a truly wonderful person.”