Introducing: Asa!
Hello! My name is Asa Isaac Spates! I am a Music Teacher at A Suite Sound’s Waxahachie center, teaching all ages and levels of piano.
I am also currently enrolled as an Undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Arlington pursuing a degree in Classical Piano Performance!
My Favorite Things:
Walking: I enjoy going on long walks while listening to some of my favorite pieces of music; it's a great time for me to slow down and think!
Pickleball: I love playing pickleball; it can be such an invigorating sport, making it one of the primary ways I stay active, and like most things, it's even better with friends!
Reading: give me a cup of green tea and a Charles Dickens novel and I could sit there for hours! I enjoy fiction, fantasy, philosophy, and history! Some of my favorite authors include J.R.R. Tolkien, Herman Mellville, David Foster Wallace, and of course, Charles Dickens!
Cooking: With a good tune, the right ingredients and my favorite cookware, I will have so much fun in the kitchen. I have had great delight in experimenting with new flavors and recently have been learning how to cook Italian, Indian and Nepalese dishes.
Favorite Teaching Methods:
One of my favorite things to try and teach students of all levels is to imagine the piano is a wind instrument that requires physical breathing in order to play! (This is helpful because students tend to get tense and hold their breath. This technique helps them learn how to relax and helps teach phrasing as well).
Some other fun and helpful “tactics” I enjoy using in lessons are: closing the piano lid and tapping out the correct rhythms, singing the different parts within the song or piece that the student is learning, and using really vivid real-world illustrations to get the student in the right character for a given piece!
Why Did you Decide to Pursue Classical Piano Performance?
I started learning piano at a very young age, so music was always such a central part of my life. I remember the day quite well… It was towards the end of sophomore year of high school; I was practicing my scales and thought to myself “Asa, if you want to do this in college, you are going to need to make the decision now to pursue music as a career and work towards it.” That very day, I began to think about college prep; what I needed to audition with, and how far I would need to go before I could make this happen. I practiced a lot the following couple of years and would have given up many times if it were not for my love for music instilled in me at an early age. I decided on piano performance because I planned to perform and to teach. I love taking others where I have gone and teaching them all the things I have learned so that they can better express themselves through their piano playing.
My “Why”:
Music is living and active; music connects people and bridges the division of culture and religion without forfeiting the cultural and religious backgrounds it was conceived from. Music feels so close and speaks the heights and depths no words could ever reach. Music is speech for the soul and to share that joy through performing and teaching has resulted in some of my proudest accomplishments, and has now become one of the most humbling journeys for me.
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Mr. Asa has just a few open spots left for piano lessons– contact us today to schedule with him at our Waxahachie location!
