About Eric Nolte
Eric Nolte
Music Teacher, Master
Get to know Eric Nolte
ABOUT ME:
I’m a native of Richmond, but I left town for college right after high school. College was interrupted by a stint in the Army, and then a career as an airline pilot based in New York City. Airline flying took me away and around the world for decades.
My parents were string players in the Richmond Symphony. They gave me an early start at playing the violin and the piano, but I did not work very hard or even continue playing all through my childhood. I liked music and played other instruments, trumpet and French horn in the concert band, and snare drum in the marching band, but I was 25 before the music bug really bit me.
I believe that my strength as a teacher may be because I did not get very serious about music until I was an adult. Therefore, I remember how hard I struggled to learn how to play the piano. I remember how I came to understand the nuts and bolts of music and what animates this glorious and inspiring area of being human. As a late-bloomer, I had the experience that showed me how to help others make more effective progress with music.
Musical prodigies may not remember how they developed their prodigious skills. Therefore, they may not sympathize with the struggles of mere mortals, or know how to tell others how to acquire the skills that they themselves may take for granted.
I would also count it among my strengths that I do not believe I have all the answers, and, moreover, I continue to reflect upon the pianist’s problems… ears, arms, hands, and minds… always trying to find better ways to grow and play.
SOME PROJECTS I'VE WORKED ON:
I’ve performed as a solo pianist in many places, including many churches and two National Music Clubs, one in Florida (where I graduated from New College, in Sarasota) and the other at the library of New Rochelle, New York.
I spent two years in Aaron Frankel’s workshop on writing for the musical theater, where I wrote the score for a children’s musical.
I wrote the score for a student’s film (which sadly died in post-production for lack of money.)
I’ve accompanied other musicians in chamber music.
I have stacks of music that I have composed, some of which I have performed in public.
SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION
My parents divorced when I was 11, so for three years I went to live with my godparents in Los Angeles and then in Paris, where I was put in a boarding school at 12 years old, and came away fluent in French.
Graduate of Huguenot High School.
A year at the North Carolina School of the Arts where I studied piano with Marjorie Mitchell.
I am a graduate of New College of Florida, where I studied music theory, composition, viola, and piano performance.
I studied piano with Gray Perry.
I’ve studied voice and spent many years singing in various choirs and in such choral groups as Charis Chamber Voices (a 30-voice a cappella choir in New York which performed a piece I wrote for them) and Eric Kramer’s Collegium Westchester.
Part time attendance in New York City at the New School for Social Research, where, among other things, I participated for two years in Aaron Frankel’s workshop on writing for the musical theater, as I said, and composed the score for a children’s musical.
INTERESTS AND HOBBIES
I maintain a lively interest in philosophy (the mother of everything, after all…) psychology, economics (insofar as it helps to explain human action) and other things that inspire thoughtful human beings to wrestle with unraveling The Big Questions of life, love, and the cosmos.
I’ve written articles that appeared (mostly long ago) in some national magazines (mostly aviation magazines) but also, perhaps astonishingly, three articles in the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education. Ask me about it….
Tennis, walking.
Eric Nolte teaches at:
9712 Midlothian Tpke
Richmond, VA 23235
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