Mike Maher's Profile

Background:

Do you or your child want to start the clarinet or is your goal to reach the next level? Are you looking to reduce stage fright or to pass conservatorium graduation? Are you searching for the best clarinet teaching to actually get you to your goals? ​ Then you need to have a good teacher. How can you differentiate the good teacher from the vast majority of ordinary teachers?​ Firstly, it is a big myth that famous musicians are by default good teachers. Most famous musicians did not consciously study the process of learning and the many different ways of acquiring musical results because they were very gifted students and guided to success by their own teachers. Acquiring a successful teaching methodology requires a lot of dedication, time and patience, which many famous musicians would not have due to their intensive practice, concert and recording schedule. Ordinary teachers plan their teaching for the next few months based on the student’s or the parent’s goals. The good teacher is the student’s mentor and coach, establishes for himself a long-term vision and larger goals and takes the expectations and learning step by step. The good teacher is also confident to disagree with the student or parent if it would hinder the student’s progress and reach the larger goal. The vast majority of teachers are able to correctly assess a student’s weaker areas to be worked on overall, but only the good teacher judges the abilities and character of the student right and prioritizes what is needed right now in order to motivate and reach best progress. Most teachers have established a small repertoire of teaching material, from which they source all exercises for all their students. The good teacher perpetually strives to find the exactly right material for each student from a vast collection of knowledge and books, adding more flexibility and diversity to his collection all the time. The good teacher is also not afraid of sharing the well kept secrets from the old masters to help his students prosper. Average teachers plan their teaching around the fixed contracted time with the student. The good teacher does not measure teaching success with lesson duration and dedicates extra time if it helps the student reach the goal of the lesson. Many of my students successfully gained a scholarship for private schools in Australia, reached their ABRSM exams in Ireland or passed their conservatorium auditions. The success of my lessons is based on 25 years of experience as professional concert musician and the wisdom passed down from my teachers Charles Neidich, Karl Leister, Walter Boeykens, Philippe Cuper, Willem van der Vuurst, Leo van Tool, Einar Johannesson, Ronald van Spaendonck, Ralph Manno, Marco Thomas, Anatoly Moratof and Harmen de Boer.