Community School of Music and Arts — Attraction in Mountain View

CSMA is truly a community GEM. I got to know CSMA first through its corporate program at Google, really enjoyed my piano teacher Dr. Nicholas Isaacs. His impressive passion and dedication in music education (40+ years) has led me to a new level of understanding and appreciation for music. He always has perfect, comprehensive, and thorough answers to every one of my questions at both micro and macro levels, from techniques to composers, music history and even to other subjects that I can easily relate to. He gave me confidence that anyone, even adult beginners like me, can enjoy piano learning and can learn to play piano gracefully. He inspired me to be a better piano student myself, a better mom supporting a piano student (my daughter) at home, and to have growing love and appreciation for music.

Besides my own private lesson experience, I have also been constantly impressed by the quality of their faculty, variety of music programs, well-rounded music learning environment and the community they build at CSMA.

1 - Faculty: After watching one of their annual faculty showcase concert, I was immediately convinced and moved my daughter from a nearby music studio (after she studied there for 4 years) to CSMA. This is a group of unparalleled talented, passionate, lifelong musicians and dedicated teachers. We really like her teacher Dr Axel Schmitt. Axel is an extremely professional and knowledgeable pianist & teacher. He has high standards and a very supportive and patient teaching style at the same time. Very rare to have both. His focus on technical details and music expression is truly remarkable and significantly helped my daughter advance in Piano.

2 - Music Programs: They offer intro classes for beginners, private lessons on a wide range of instruments, band and orchestra ensemble opportunities for kids to make music together, and also music theory classes! My daughter is currently taking CSMA Performance Choir and Music Theory Lab. She really likes her teacher Judaline Swinkles, Teressa Ronan for Choir, Elvin Hsieh for Music Theory, and she enjoys the inclusive, supportive and friendly atmosphere in each and every class she attended.

3 - Performance Opportunities: They have many performance opportunities each year, including monthly practice recitals, teacher studio recitals, music school recitals; They are all optional and they have their own beautiful performance hall and Steinway pianos!!

4 - Community Concert Series: CSMA offers free community concert series. Performers have included numerous Grammy -winning and nominated artists, their own world-renown faculty members, and their top tier Merit Scholar Students, who are the role models for younger students like my daughter to look up to. We attend those concerts quite often. It’s a great way to relax, experience variety of music, and connect with friends on a Friday or Saturday night.

Highly recommend CSMA for music learning and I wish i had know this place...

I recently hit a little funk in my adult life where my career stabilized and I found that when I had free time, I didn't know what to do with it and was looking for some sort of "spark" of something to enjoy doing by myself. Through a monthly Mountain View newsletter I found out about CSMA and was interested in their adult art classes. I AM SO GLAD I ENROLLED. Let's be clear, I am not a great artist and don't have a lot of time but in 6 months I've enrolled in 2 different CSMA classes. The first one I took was called "Mini Session: Intro to Drawing and Sketching." It was so fun, it was just 2 hours from 4 pm - 6 pm on Friday's for 5 weeks and I felt like I learned some great fundamentals about how to draw/doodle, and form shapes that I visually saw on paper. We learned how to use pencils with different grades, sharpie, and even charcoal. It got me excited to sketch more complex things even though again, I'm not a great artist so I took another class called "Mini Session: Intro to Flower Drawing." In this class, we not only learned how to draw and shade with colored pencils but we also used markers and did some brush painting. All materials were provided and the cost broke down to ~$40 - $60 per class. Both classes were taught by Qing Xu who is a great teacher and was able to adapt to the different skill levels of everyone in the class. For example, I was super basic/beginner but there were some other people who were REALLY good and she was able to help them advance their art and gave them a more complex image that they were excited about trying. The format of the class was also really nice, Qing would first do a demo to introduce how to draw/sketch what we were trying to do and then help us get there depending on what our needs were. CSMA also offers classes that are longer than 5 sessions long, but I'm a nurse and not able to commit to having the same day off every week so the mini sessions were perfect for me. I also felt really comfortable because I'm 24 and there were adults of all ages (my oldest classmate said she was 63 I think) and it was nice to just commit to drawing for 2 hours a week and getting so much joy from it. I have now since bought a simple "Crayola water color set" so that I can start painting flowers because I realized I like painting better than drawing (and what do you know, there's also an 'Intro to Flower Painting' class that I'm trying to take later on if schedule allows). I cannot emphasize how much fun these classes were and would...

For anyone considering piano lessons, I wholeheartedly recommend CSMA! My experience with Muza Mdzinarishvili, a Distinguished Faculty member, was outstanding.

As an adult learner, I truly valued her balanced teaching style: she consistently acknowledged my progress, which was very motivating, while also gently guiding me to address my weaknesses. What sets Muza apart is her ability to create personalized homework assignments that are a perfect blend of pieces by composers I adore and targeted exercises to develop my finger skills. She's an amazing...