Lucy Moses School

We took quite a few classes at this school. Ms. Lesley is very good at disciplining the children, even the 2 year olds. I highly recommend her as a music teacher.
The experience with the voice teacher ms. Perkins, on the other hand, was a total disappointment. She has no affection for children and couldn’t keep them interested during the class. She complained that our five year old girl wanted to play and didn’t focus in the class. She didn’t bother giving me any feedbacks until I approached her at the very end of first semester. She was talking about a five year old girl who sat through numerous abt ballet and Met opera performances. I don’t think the five year old has anything to be blamed on but ms. Perkins herself. Avoid this class by all means.
We decided to quit the class in the middle even though the school denied U.S. A refund. It is waste of our time and effort to continue.

My child took both group (Dalcroze) and private music lessons here. First, the good: this place offers a very wide range of music classes for kids. Whatever you want, odds are you can find it here! Also, the woman we met with when we initially signed up my son for lessons was great. She obviously took music very seriously, and took the time to show him all the different instruments and let him experiment with them before he chose one to play. I really like that they think it is important for the child to take the lead in deciding what to play.
As far as the group lessons, I’m not sure what went on in the class, or whether the lessons were valuable. My son did seem to enjoy the class, but he enjoys most things that involve getting together with other kids! Other than the class description I saw when I signed him up for the class, I have no idea what they did. We adults would gather around the room, they would go in, the doors would shut, and we would pick them up again when the class was over. The teacher never really told us what they were doing, or how our kids were doing.
Our private music lesson teacher was new – he had recently graduated and this was his first year teaching. He was very kind, and amazingly patient! However, because it was his first year, I don’t think he was very used to working with small children, so there was definitely a learning curve. It took a while for us all to figure out what kind of things we could expect my son to do, how long he could concentrate, etc. Also, because the teacher had just graduated, and naturally wanted to put his skills to good use as a professional musician in an orchestra, he was always traveling to go to auditions, which meant that we always had to reschedule. Sometimes, this meant scheduling two sessions back to back, which just doesn’t work for a kindergartener. Their attention spans simply aren’t that long!
For the amount of money I spent, I think that the lessons just weren’t worthwhile. We subsequently switched to another music school, where he had an experienced teacher who was devoted to teaching – and it made a world of difference. I really wish we had started off there. My son has also taken group lessons at other places, and there was much more feedback given to parents, as far as what the kids were doing. There are so many great music schools in New York that I’m not sure this one is worth attending, if most experiences there are like ours.
I also have to say, I have never seen so many badly behaved children (and parents) in my life. While waiting for classes to start, a lot of the kids were allowed to run through the halls, literally screaming. The teachers would continually beg the parents/​nannies to stop their kids from doing this, to no avail. In the waiting room, where the kids are supposed to play quietly while they are waiting for classes to begin, adults would sit nearby, staring at their cell phones, while their children would say and do terrible things to other kids. In my child’s Dalcroze class, kids were often asked to leave the class because they were so badly behaved. Once, while riding in the elevator, this woman giggled as her son pressed all the buttons on the elevator, while everyone else on the packed elevator groaned. I don’t understand why this music school would attract so many awful parents, but it does – so beware!