Wanda Cook, founder and Executive Director, has been teaching piano for over 30 years. As a fourth generation piano teacher, she brings a heritage of pedagogy and tradition into the present. Mrs. Cook received her piano training from her grandmother, Helen Genevieve Pinkstaff Spillenaar, a Julliard graduate from whom she learned to appreciate the way in which technical control empowers artistic delivery.
She graduated from Simpson college with a degree in Business Administration and Biblical Literature. Although, at that time, she did not choose to study music, she taught piano lessons in her mother's studio and found employment as a music and theory tutor in the Simpson music department.
With strict application of tradition but with a fresh and inspiring manner, Mrs. Cook is credited with transforming hundreds of children into fluent and proficient pianists. Her students perform at the highest levels throughout Solano County and go on to pursue professional careers and college music degrees. She has trained teachers to apply her methods with the aim to create pianists from a developmental model that addresses informed practice, applied technique, musical phrasing, tonal control, and empowered performances.
