Today we’d like to introduce you to Hiromi Nasife.
Hi Hiromi, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in and raised in Japan. My music life started when I was three years old. I played the piano mostly but I play other instruments like guitar, horn, and drums too. Luckily my music teachers had a wide range of genres. Thanks to that, I could expose not only classical music but also jazz, fusion, rock, and pop music. I grew up always surrounded by music.
I decided to go to the music path so I chose my major study at the university was music education and performance of Piano & voice. After graduating I started teaching piano at my home studio besides I was working at the airport as airport ground staff. Most classmates at the college were going to be music teachers or even didn’t get a job. I was a little different than others so I wanted to go outside of the music world.
So I applied for one of the jobs that I wanted to be since I was little besides becoming a music teacher which was an airline worker. I really loved working at the local airport for several years and I learned professional customer service there. At the same time, I never quit teaching piano. I had double jobs in my 20s. While I was working at the airport, I went to Canada for a year to study English which was one of my dreams to do. As soon as I came back from Canada I met my husband then I came to the US in 2005.
Fortunately, my husband provided me with a grand piano from day 1 so that I didn’t have to miss my home country much. I played the piano every day so loudly (I guess) my neighbor started coming to my door and asked me if I teach piano. That’s how I started my music studio in the US. I was living in St. Augustine for a while then I moved to where I live now in Ponte Vedra, I got more students with words of mouth. I now have a website but I didn’t have that most of the time to advertise my studio.
Even now most of my students came to my studio with people’s references. My music career here in here not only teaching piano. I have my own Japanese lady chorus unit called “ Nadeshiko “ I founded this group in 2017 fall and we have performed at private parties, senior care centers international events at the UF, and so on. As a music director of Nadeshiko, I learned how to handle teamwork how to choose music for the occasion, etc.
Since the pandemic we had to slow down our activities but we managed to be able to continue our group not to break up and we are constantly practicing and always be ready for the next performance. I am also helping the local art school (Douglas Anderson) and Jacksonville children’s chorus group as an accompanist.
It’s so much fun to see young musicians progress and hard work to be better musicians. One of my dreams is to support young artists with any knowledge or experience from my musical life and pass it on to the next generation.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest struggle was language!!! But luckily music is a universal language that helped me to go through to now but to be honest still I struggle! especially expressions with words!! Also as I started to teach in the US, I wasn’t sure what people want from my lesson. Different countries have different standards.
As I teach more I realized that I just need to stick with my own way.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Besides piano teacher, I am a music director of my chorus unit Nadeshiko which is not a professional group but we are lucky to have collaborated with such well-known professional musicians. Most people are easily intimidated by playing with professionals but my concept is music shouldn’t divide us, more of connecting each other by music. That’s what I try to focus on and provide with my experiences.
As a piano teacher, I guess I am a little unique as I’m not only a piano teacher also can teach voice. I am known as a versatile music teacher. I sent some students to college by supporting both piano and vocal lessons also I accompanied them for their auditions as well. As I mentioned earlier I teach choral music as well.
People might say I am not specialized in the specific category but I take whole music is as one category therefore I teach whatever I can anything related to music.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Because of the pandemic happened, private face-to-face lessons was not popular for a while, instead of online lesson became more popular. (which am not a big fan of). The good thing is I can reach the students all over the world as long as there is no or ok with a language barrier or time zones difference.
Also, I start seeing more adults are interested in learning music in both voice and piano. piano lessons are not only for children’s activities. I hope more adults take lessons and have fun with music in their life. When adults ( parents) are happy, kids are happy too!!
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: naturalrhythmmusicstudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasife163
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hiromi.nasife
