Lona Kozik

Since I started lessons at the age of 11, the piano has been the centre of my universe. I play it, I teach it, I write music for it.

I have been teaching piano since I began my undergraduate education in 1995. I have taught students ranging in age from 3 to 50+. I aim to provide fun, interesting and lively music lessons. I believe everyone should play a musical instrument, and my mission as a teacher is to equip students with the musical skills needed to grow and nurture their musical passions.

I hold dual undergraduate degrees in piano performance and music theory, a doctorate in composition from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and a masters degree in performance with an improvisation emphasis from Mills College in California, where I won the Flora Boyd Piano Performance Prize in 2011. I have studied piano with Richard Veleta, Pavlina Radoslavova and Robert Schwartz; improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell and Zeena Parkins; and composition with Robert Maggio, Jay Reise, James Primosch and Anna Weesner.

My performance projects have included developing a programme of music by 20th-century American innovators (John Cage, Henry Cowell, George Crumb, Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, Alvin Curran) as well as a programme of the music of Erik Satie featuring Dadaist film, readings and dance.

I have written music for solo piano (students and professionals) and various ensembles, including the Ten Tors Orchestra led by Simon Ible and the piano duo of Frank Denyer and Catherine Laws. In 2009, my suite of piano etudes, Fast Jump, was issued on the Innova label by the American pianist, Danny Holt, and received favourable critical review.

I started the Totnes School of Piano in 2012.