About Me
My name is Eugene Portman I am a performing pianist who is now giving face to face piano lessons in the Horsham and Crawley areas. I have been a professional musician from the age of eighteen and my experience covers many different performing roles from playing the piano at private parties and weddings to classical concerts and jazz clubs. As well as a teacher, I am an active performer and provide music for a variety of events. My piano teaching reflects my own personal experiences as a solo performer, accompanist and ensemble player. this includes many tricks and tips that I have learned along the way.
My own journey started as a classically trained pianist and I found it a very difficult to improvise. It seemed that the skills that I had learned in my training didn’t help with the challenges that I had to face outside of the classical world. In actual fact I often found my highly disciplined classical training a hindrance rather than being beneficial. It was a barrier that had to be broken down.
The essence of my teaching lies in nurturing and developing the mastery of improvisation. Many people believe that improvisation cannot be taught and is a gift that a person is born with. However, many stumbling blocks can be overcome and I can usually get students to improvise in a very short space of time. Obviously, same people have more natural ability, but I believe that anyone who can play the piano can learn to improvise.
I am based in the Horsham area and I am happy to travel to you so that I can teach you on your own instrument. .I have found that this works best as people are more relaxed in their own environment. This helps them learn more easily and helps free their creativity. Being tense and nervous doesn’t help when it comes to improvisation.
Who I Teach
My speciality is teaching pianists with a basic background of the piano including basic musical theory and being able to read simple sheet music. I can also guide more advanced pianists so that they are more able to perform in a professional environment. I don’t usually teach complete beginners or children. I find that there are many other teachers around that can do this very competently.
I am based in the Horsham area and I am happy to travel to you so that I can teach you on your own instrument. I have found that people are more relaxed in their own environment and learn much more easily. This is especially true when it comes to jazz and blues improvisation.
I cover Horsham, Crawley, Broadbridge Heath, Southwater, Pease Pottage, Warnham and surrounding areas. My piano teaching reflects my own personal experiences as a performer and includes many tricks and tips that I have learned along the way.
What I Teach
My teaching covers all the fundamentals with a view to enabling the pupil to improvise freely in many styles of music including blues, jazz, Latin, pop and rock.
Freedom and creativity are essential qualities when playing jazz, blues and more popular styles of music. I find that very often a student just needs to be shown a few scales and a few tricks to get them started in their journey to being able to improvise freely.
My teaching program will help enable you to play 12 bar blues, jazz standards, plus pop and rock songs. You will learn to read chord charts, accompany singers, as well as improvise fluently. You will also learn chords, scales and modes, block chords, tritone substitution and many other fundamentals of improvisation.My name is Eugene Portman and I have been a professional musician from the age of eighteen. My experience covers many different performing roles from pub singalongs and weddings to classical concerts, jazz clubs and even ballet accompaniment. I am an active performer and provide music for a variety of events.
If you would like to find out more about me, then please visit www.eugeneportman.com