Ask most piano teachers what defines a good lesson, and you’ll hear about scales, posture, and repertoire lists. Ask Tessa Ying, and the answer looks different: a good lesson is one where a student leaves more curious than when they arrived.
As detailed by Brainz Magazine, Ying’s relationship with the piano started early — she was four years old when she first sat at the keys in Brookline, Massachusetts. What followed was a training path few musicians experience: conservatories and programs in Singapore, England, and the United States, culminating in formal study at Berklee College of Music. Each stop left its mark. Singapore’s exam-centered system, she explains, gave her the technical rigor and discipline that later let her take creative risks without losing precision. By the time she reached Berklee, she was already equipped to absorb the school’s broader, more exploratory approach to music-making — and to start thinking seriously about teaching as a craft in its own right.
A Studio Built Around the Student, Not the Syllabus
Ying’s students prepare for exams administered by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, headquartered in London and one of just five exam boards carrying Ofqual accreditation in England. The credential matters practically, too: it carries UCAS points that count toward university admissions in the UK. Under her guidance, close to 90% of students land distinction marks in both performance and theory — a track record that speaks to a teaching method built on more than repetition drills.
That method has produced standout results. Student Alan Huang, who has trained with Ying for six years, took home the Gold Prize and a Technical Mastery Prize at the 2024 Global Genius Music Competition, along with a Third Prize at the Charleston International Competition. Huang describes lessons with Ying as feeling more like sessions with a friend than formal instruction, adding that he never approaches competitions or exams with dread because he trusts the preparation behind him. He credits Ying with an intuitive sense of matching repertoire to a student’s natural strengths — choosing pieces that showcase potential while still being pieces the student can fall in love with.
Genre as a Bridge, Not a Wall
Perhaps the most distinctive thread running through Ying’s philosophy is her refusal to specialize in a single musical lane. Her students move between classical composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin and contemporary material — film scores, K-pop, and pop radio hits — without treating the jump as a stretch. Repertoire has included music from Studio Ghibli films, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” John Williams’ Harry Potter score, and “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Ying’s reasoning is straightforward: genres are not competitors, they’re expressions of the same underlying impulse. Music, in her view, connects people emotionally regardless of the stylistic label attached to it. That belief shapes her next release, AfterGlow — an electronic, downtempo composition that folds acoustic piano into a bed of produced soundscapes, treating the two textures as complementary rather than contradictory.
From the Studio to the Recording Booth
Teaching isn’t the only place Ying applies her ear. In 2025, she stepped into a production role, recording high-quality audio and video for pianists submitting to major competitions and festivals. Her work included sessions with Chia Ying Lee, a semifinalist at the Boston International Piano Competition, and Carl Di Casoli, who placed second at the 2025 Oberlin Competition. The recorded program spanned Saint-Saëns, Bach, Liszt, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff — repertoire that demands both technical clarity and interpretive nuance to capture well. Ying has said her goal in production is to preserve a performance as faithfully as possible, treating the process as a blend of performance, production, and collaboration rather than a purely technical recording job. Those recordings later supported Lee’s successful entry into further competitions, including at Oberlin.
Teaching Beyond the Studio Walls
Ying’s commitment to music education extends past her private studio. She’s involved with Arts for Learning Massachusetts, a nonprofit that brings arts programming into underserved schools, with a mission centered on giving all students equal access to arts opportunities. As Music Director for the organization’s community productions, Ying has guided casts of more than 30 young performers through weekly rehearsals, vocal coaching, and interpretation work. Her most recent production, staged in spring 2026, was an adaptation of “Finding Nemo,” following the previous year’s staging of “Aladdin.”
She’s also behind The Art of Piano, a recital series held at M. Steinert & Sons — New England’s oldest Steinway dealership, with a 150-year legacy in the region. The Spring 2026 event featured two back-to-back showcases with 24 performers playing a 7-foot Steinway Spirio, with a program that ranged from classical works by Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin to contemporary pieces drawn from film and popular music. For many performers, the chance to play on a Steinway of that caliber added weight to the experience — and, according to those who took part, helped ease the nerves that often come with performing in front of an audience.
For Ying, the results that matter most aren’t always the prizes. She points instead to what happens when students watch each other perform: the way one musician’s piece sparks another’s curiosity, sending them off to discover new music they end up loving on their own.
Eduindex 
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