Home Piano Lessons in the Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park vicinity
Hello there, I'm Alvin.
I am a piano teacher offering lessons at your home. You can also have remote lessons via Zoom, Skype or Google Meet.
I travel to Crouch End, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, Islington, Finsbury Park, Highgate and Wood Green. The range of postcodes I cover includes N4, N5, N6, N8, N10, N17, N19 and N22.
You'll learn to play adaptations of well-known music, across genres such as classical, pop, rock, anime, metal and jazz. The music you'll play in lessons is familiar, current, and at a suitable level of difficulty.
You'll also learn how to improvise your own version of existing songs.
If you like, you can prepare for
Why Learn the Piano With Me?
You'll learn positively, with music tailored to your abilities.
We'll work from music that you can play and move on to more difficult repertoire as your skills and concentration improve. The focus is positive, on what you can do and what you can aim for.
You'll develop your current piano skills so you can continually play harder, impressive-sounding music. I'll also show you how you can improvise your own versions of your favourite songs.
You'll get to play music you like.
Piano playing requires co-ordination of six or seven independent tasks, and it is always reassuring and satisfying to know you are playing the correct notes.
Playing songs you are familiar with also helps with improve the reading of musical notation, because you'll have already have an idea of what the music should sound like, and hence know what the written notes, rhythmic symbols and expression marks are trying to convey.
In my own time, I write out and arrange your favourite songs at a suitable level of difficulty for you to play, at no extra charge to you.
Do you know any other piano teacher who does that on a regular basis?
I charge reasonable rates and am flexible.
My rates vary depending on your location, but they are comparable to rates charged by local music services for children's piano lessons in schools. The current rate charged by Haringey Music Service is £40.32 per hour for the academic year 2025-26.
In some cases - such as when siblings have lessons, and if I'm already in your area - I charge the school lesson rate, or less !
I teach in areas such as Crouch End, Hornsey, Finsbury Park, Muswell Hill and Wood Green, and my travel costs are shared among students. Please contact me to ask - my rates are frequently lower than most teachers who do home visits.
I have no cancellation fees.
I am particularly understanding if you need to cancel at short notice (e.g. due to child illness). Or maybe you've suddenly remembered about another appointment - as long as I've not appeared at your doorstep, that's fine!
Other music schools or tutors may require you to give 24 hours' notice for cancelling a lesson. I don't - no one plans an illness in advance! - and I understand that life sometimes just gets a little bit complicated for our liking!
Need a recap?
Music you like
A positive learning process
Very reasonable rates
No cancellation fees, no contract, no notice period!
Today's blog snippet - see more in the Posts section!
Felix Mendelssohn was born into a wealthy and cultured family. Grandad Moses was a philosopher, and father Abraham had been a well-known banker who fled Hamburg, Felix's birthplace in order to escape Napoleon's troops. In Berlin, young Felix was drawn into a artistic social circle that consisted of a range of philosophers, actors, writers and artists. This influence was to make a huge impression on him in his life. Mendelssohn's travels, the landscapes he saw, the people he met and the literature he read all found their way into his music. Two of his orchestral overtures were inspired by Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Goethe's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The influence of landscapes can be heard in his Scottish Symphony and Italian Symphony. When he visited Scotland in 1829, the visit to Fingal's cave on the Isle of Staffa inspired him to compose the famous Hebrides overture.
Mendelssohn's piano concertos show him making original experiments to the structure, such as in linking the movements of the works together, a trait that would become a common feature of Romantic music. His Songs Without Words for piano are beautiful works that expressively convey the singing tone of the piano and are a feature in any serious pianist's repertoire.
But it is arguably his work as a conductor that his greatest contribution to Classical music was made. He was responsible for bringing to life the then-forgotten works of J S Bach, including the famous B Minor Mass, as well as the oratorios of George Frideric Handel. Had it not been for Mendelssohn's revival of these works, they may have laid forgotten, and Bach may have never received the acclaim he does in the modern day. And Mendelssohn did not just promote the works of the past. The careers of other composers and performers, such as Robert and Clara Schumann, Hector Berlioz and the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein were all given a boost by him. Many of his proteges were invited to join the staff of the Leipzig Conservatory when it was inaugurated in 1843 and became a respected musical institution under Mendelssohn's direction. Sadly, Mendelssohn died four years later aged 38, joining composers such as Chopin, Schubert and Mozart as a unfortunate quartet never to have experienced life in their forties. One wonders what might have been if their musical torches had not been extinguished so soon.