About

Hey! My name’s Austin and I teach guitar and piano in Manhattan!

I love to be a guide for students on their musical journeys, or to chime in as more of a consultant for people well on their way!

  • Kiddos 🙌

  • Teens 👍

  • Adults 👌

  • 0-year-olds at Music Together? ✅

  • 99-year-olds in retirement homes? ✅

  • Learning disabilities? ✅

  • Physical issues? ✅

If we’re talking teaching music, I’ve done it and I’m here for it! 🎶

Let's Connect

Teaching Background:

  • 2017 humble beginnings on Craigslist charging $15/hr.

  • 2018 began teaching at Guitar Center.

  • 2020 I founded Austin French Music Lessons and have had a bustling studio ever since!

Musical Experience:

  • Ensembles:

    • Choral:

      • St. John the Divine Chorale, Hallowell Hospice Choir, Saxtons Rivers Singers, Shrewsbury Singers, Lake Washington United Methodist Church, Chamber Singers, Glee Club

    • Rock:

  • Teachers

From 2018-2022 I manically consumed everything the University of Washington had to offer and graduated with 3 degrees in Guitar Performance, Music Theory, and Music History. In other words: I can help you shred or go down rabbit holes in jazz theory and classical esoterica. 

During and after my degree, I became obsessed with the music of Klaus Lendzian, an absolutely obscure guitarist-composer (who happened to be the friend of my first guitar teacher). And thus founded and serve as the director of the Klaus Lendzian Archive. Read about that more at the hyperlink, but he released 25 albums, and recorded ~17 hours of original solo guitar compositions. I moved to Vermont in 2023 in part as somewhat of a sabbatical to focus solely on transcribing Lendzian’s music. I transcribed ~8 hours of music, breaking the 1000 page mark 😄. Go check them out here 😊. His music is an unbelievable fusion of jazz, folk, flamenco, and classical. 

Besides that, I’ve just been playing and studying a lot of music! I’ve put my 10,000+ hours into guitar, my first instrument. But I also have serious passion for piano, voice, and drums and continue to invest in all of the above. 

I’ve sung operatically as a church section leader and soloist, been the drummer of a punk two-piece, sung at the bedside of the dying as part of a hospice choir, and performed around the United States as a classical guitarist. 

Notably: I’m not a performer. I’m a teacher, a pedagogue.

I enjoy teaching children and adults equally.

My focus is on BECOMING A TRUE MUSICIAN. That means you can hear what’s playing at the grocery store and know what’s going on and go home and play it at your house. It means you can improvise and compose, you can read music, understand and speak theory.

I DON’T care if you can play Fur Elise at 200bpm. There’s always going to be a 9-year-old that can play the masterworks of yestercenturies, and God bless them, but we’re not about that.

I really like working with students creatively. I tell students, there’s one’s individual creativity, hands, brain, and ears. i help with the latter three to make the first one come to life!

hands, brain, ears.

then for sure, test of musical fluency, speak, listen, read and write.

I can help a range of different students. Some come to me with physical issues: “how do my hands do this? My joints hurt. Shoulder bugs me. Don’t know how to hold this thing”

or it’s “I can play guitar pretty well, I know chords, scales, songs,….but what am I missing here?! Why can’t I play as freely and joyously”

or “I got this acting part and need to learn piano asap!”