Testimonials

Ques­tions to Patrick:

Patrick, how has pi­ano helped you get into col­lege?

I’ve re­ceived a lot of awards and ac­co­lades through pi­ano, which def­i­nite­ly helped. There aren’t a great num­ber of pi­anists that aren’t mu­sic ma­jors that can play con­cert reper­toire and be rec­og­nized for it. So that was great for my re­sume. An­oth­er thing is that I had a sto­ry, since I fin­ished all the ex­ams for Cer­tifi­cate of Mer­it and Guild col­lege prepara­to­ry spe­cial in 2 years and be­came a top pi­anist in So­Cal de­spite a tech­ni­cal dis­ad­van­tage ini­tial­ly, so that helped as well.

What is your ma­jor?

My ma­jor is elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing, which is one of the most pop­u­lar and dif­fi­cult ma­jors in UCLA to get into. The en­gi­neer­ing school has about a 3-4% ac­cep­tance rate, with 20000 fresh­man ap­plications and 650 spots across 8 ma­jors. The av­er­age GPA was a 4.4 and sat was a 2180, so I’m sure that my ac­com­plish­ments in mu­sic cer­tain­ly helped me stand out.

How many years pi­ano to­tal and with me?
Years of pi­ano- I’ve stud­ied pi­ano for 12 years, start­ing in Sep­tember 2002. I stud­ied with you for 5 years, start­ing from my 8th grade
year. In those 5 years, I did about 20-30 com­pe­ti­tions and per­for­mances.

How in par­tic­u­lar has my teach­ing and pro­gram helped you get into col­lege of your choice?

I def­i­nite­ly learned how to learn through pi­ano, and while that may not be com­plete­ly no­tice­able on an ap­pli­ca­tion, it cer­tain­ly helped
me do well in high school and tests, and will con­tin­ue to help me in col­lege.

How is my teach­ing dif­fer­ent / su­pe­ri­or to con­ven­tion­al, main­stream pi­ano lessons?

Dif­fer­ences from oth­er teach­ers

The first thing is the em­pha­sis on foun­da­tion. I can’t stress how im­por­tant it is to have a good foun­da­tion. I didn’t have a stel­lar founda­tion when I start­ed, and it took me years to close the gap be­tween my­self and my fel­low com­peti­tors. There are cer­tain things that you just can’t play well if you don’t have those pat­terns en­grained into your brain from day one. It makes learn­ing and re­fin­ing a
piece so much eas­i­er.

The sec­ond is the em­pha­sis on lay­ers. You learn the tech­nique, and fun­da­men­tals of in­ter­pre­ta­tion when you learn a piece. Great. That doesn’t win com­pe­ti­tions, that doesn’t make you mem­o­rable. The great part about learn­ing in lay­ers is that each time you polish a piece or de­cide to work it fur­ther, there’s more to dis­cov­er and learn. From re­fin­ing the dy­nam­ic con­trast be­tween sec­tions, to
line lead­ing, to fin­ger­ing, to fi­nal­ly just let­ting it go, there’s more to a piece that can be tack­led in one work­ing of a piece. You have to ap­proach it from mul­ti­ple an­gles and oc­ca­sions to re­al­ly get it. And, learn­ing in lay­ers does ex­act­ly that.

The third is the va­ri­ety of tech­niques taught. A lot of pi­anists, es­pe­cial­ly those who might not have gone to a for­mal con­ser­va­to­ry or were high­ly com­pet­i­tive with it, don’t teach a large va­ri­ety of fin­ger and body tech­niques. They of­ten will play with a sta­t­ic form. While you can get re­al­ly good at 1 form, that form might not be suit­able for every style. The metic­u­lous sharp touch of Bach doesn’t have
the vir­tu­osic force of Beethoven or the sweep­ing light­ness of De­bussy. Tak­ing lessons with you, I’ve learned a va­ri­ety of tech­niques and sounds to max­i­mize the va­ri­ety of mu­sic that I can play. My Chopin doesn’t, and shouldn’t, sound like my Volo­dos. I’ve learned to play on the fin­ger tip, pad, mid­dle be­tween the two, com­plete­ly flat, with­out us­ing fin­ger strength at all, us­ing only the mus­cles in
my palm to play, us­ing my wrist for ar­tic­u­la­tion, us­ing only my arm for ar­tic­u­la­tion, us­ing my up­per body etc. When you have op­tions,
you play bet­ter.

The fourth is the fact that lessons aren’t com­plete­ly pri­vate. There’s back­ground noise with the dogs some­times bark­ing. There are dis­trac­tions with oth­er stu­dents work­ing on the­o­ry or ob­serv­ing you. There’s a sense of pres­sure, and that pres­sure is rem­i­nis­cent of the pres­sure felt on a stage, where every­one’s look­ing at you. The prob­lem with a lot of pi­anists in com­pe­ti­tion is that they’re eas­i­ly
dis­tract­ed; they’re spoiled by si­lence. The is­sue is that in a com­pe­ti­tion, you aren’t guar­an­teed that si­lence. I’ve heard ba­bies cry­ing and cell phones go off when I’ve per­formed, but I’m not af­fect­ed by it. Oth­er pi­anists might get thrown off, and then they can’t get back into the groove. While it can seem, es­pe­cial­ly for par­ents, ridicu­lous that oth­er stu­dents are present when their child is hav­ing a les­son, it’s im­por­tant to re­al­ize that that is a fan­tas­tic thing. They get used to crowds, they get used to ran­dom nois­es go­ing off occa­sion­al­ly when they play.

Patrick Xu, bio

Patrick Xu has stud­ied pi­ano for 12 years. He grew to love pi­ano af­ter per­form­ing Richard Clay­der­man’s “Bal­lade Pour Ade­line” in his fourth grade tal­ent show.

Af­ter be­gin­ning lessons with Eva Mar­tin, he quick­ly be­came one of the most re­spect­ed and ac­com­plished young pi­anists in Southern Cal­i­for­nia. He com­plet­ed all of the Cer­tifi­cate of Mer­it ex­ams, in­clud­ing qual­i­fy­ing for Ad­vanced Pan­el, and the Na­tion­al Pi­ano Guild’s Preper­a­to­ry Spe­cial au­di­tions in just two years, al­ways achiev­ing near-per­fect marks.

In ad­di­tion, he was a CAPMT hon­ors state fi­nal­ist, and has won com­pe­ti­tions such as the Stein­way Pi­ano Fes­ti­val.

Be­sides play­ing the pi­ano, he has also writ­ten a 45 page re­search pa­per on how Adam Mick­iewicz’s poem “Kon­rad Wal­len­rod” in­fluenced Chopin’s “Bal­lade no.1 in g mi­nor op.23”, which re­ceived out­stand­ing re­marks from the In­ternational Bac­calau­re­ate pro­gram in Switzer­land.

Dur­ing his se­nior year of high school, he be­came the vale­dic­to­ri­an and the se­nior of the year as well as be­com­ing the school’s most
ac­com­plished IB diplo­ma stu­dent.

In ad­di­tion, he was a se­nior cadet of­fi­cer in his Ma­rine Corps JROTC unit, help­ing es­tab­lish and im­prove the unit’s ad­min­is­tra­tion
and aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port di­vi­sions. He was also pres­i­dent of his school’s Sci­ence Olympiad team and was in­stru­men­tal in lead­ing the
team from last place to first place over­all in the In­land Em­pire in just two years.

His oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude dra­ma, mod­el UN, and hip hop dance. Patrick will be at­tend­ing UCLA this fall (2014) ma­jor­ing in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing, and hopes to con­tin­ue his mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion there.

Graduate from Eva Martin Hollaus Piano Studio

Hi Miss Eva!!

I’m doing great! I’ve been extremely busy for the past month but my exams are finally over for a while so you’ve caught me at the perfect time. I’m double majoring in mathematics and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. In terms of how piano has helped get me into college, I would say that it was a very strong extracurricular that I was involved with not just during high school but essentially throughout my life.

Many of my application essays had to do with my experience in competitive piano. My involvement in several different types of competitions/auditions/exams, all of which were facilitated by you and your multiple certifications, gave me this experience and allowed me totalk about myself from a nonacademic perspective which is very key in a college application.

Academics, of course, speaks volumes but extracurricular involvement is what can really push you over the edge or give you an advantage over other students in the college application process.

In my application to Johns Hopkins, I made it very clear that I had other interests besides my studies, the most compelling of which, was my involvement in piano performance.

I’ve been playing the piano for 14 years now; 12 of which were with you. I believe that one of the core components of your teaching style is to be disciplined and efficient in what you do given the time constraints that you may have.

As students, we all have several academic commitments to attend to first and foremost which often impinges on the time that we have to dedicate to other activities. In my case, whenever I had exams or tennis matches and was simultaneously preparing for a piano competition, you would always remind me that learning to play even a single measure absolutely correctly was more valuable than trying to haphazardly learn an entire line or page of music.

This lesson rings true for me in college. We have several exams to take throughout the course of a semester, often two or more within the same week, and sometimes you do not have numerous hours to dedicate to just one subject. However, for the time that you do have to study, you have to be effective and learn what you can as thoroughly as possible. Learning even 3/4 of the material meticulously will prove more beneficial than learning all of the content superficially.

As a side note, schools like Johns Hopkins do not take extracurricular involvement lightly. They expect you to achieve similar levels of success in your extracurriculars as you do in your academics.

That being said, it isn’t necessary to go overboard with your involvement…but having certifications/awards is essential to giving your non academic activity credibility.

Because you put so much emphasis on participating in piano exams, competitions, and auditions of all kinds, your students are able to accumulate a variety of qualifications. Your teaching is very different in the sense that, you require a certain amount of commitment from your students. They do not come to you to learn how to play small Christmas jingles.

You are a serious teacher who wants to produce qualified and accomplished pianists. And because you expect results from your students, you provide them with extensive amounts of lessons, attention, and training to get them where they want to be and where you believe that they can be.

You also explore a variety of techniques on how to improve one’s experience with piano. You are very open to different interpretations of works. You implement the musical teachings of other cultures.

You have also mastered the quintessential technique of several different composers. For example, there is a distinct difference between the Beethoven touch and the Bach touch on the piano.

But above all, what I enjoyed most about having you as my piano teacher was that you never gave up on me. When it was too difficult to finish a program for my Guild auditions, you would adjust to my situation and still help me complete my pieces. You are as understanding as you are demanding.

In my opinion, your expertise coupled with your passionate desire to inspire your
students in their love for classical music is what makes you an exceptional teacher.

I hope that this helps! If you have any more questions, please let me know. 🙂

Sharmini Premananthan

The years that I spent playing piano were beneficial to my life. It allowed me to pursue an interest in music that would help further along the road. Through the awards and certificates earned from piano, I was able to implement them to my college applications. These were great attributes to include to my application that showed extracurricular activities outside of school. It adds a lot more to your college application that helps you stand out as an applicant. I am currently going to Cal Poly Pomona where I am studying civil engineering. Within the university there are music courses that I will be taking which I will already have the understanding and I will enter in a better position than most people. I took 5 years of piano in total, 3 of those with Mrs. Eva. The first two years I only learned the basic concepts of being able to play the piano. I was playing at a low level with no recognition of music theory and poor form. As soon as I started with Mrs. Eva within the first few months I had learned a lot about the theory, had improved techniques and begun playing pieces while memorizing them, all within this short time. Starting off with her books was a fundamental building block to the rest of piano, which is continuously referenced back too to improve and polish playing ability. Mrs. Eva finds suitable and challenging songs that I would have not expected to be playing so soon at an early stage. The teaching methods of Mrs. Eva are outstanding. I had two previous teachers before I went to Mrs. Eva and in comparison; her teaching ability was far superior. Along with the dedication Mrs. Eva puts to teaching each of her students is astounding.