Teaching

Kimberley offers a variety of learning opportunities for students. You can now subscribe to online lessons from Kimberley’s new teaching website. She is also a regular at some of the most popular music camps in North America, such as the Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina and teaches private lessons at her home in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton. If you are interested in hiring Kimberley for a workshop or teaching opportunity, contact her at .

Kimberley emphasizes the traditional method of learning by ear. She helps develop techniques for identifying and incorporating stylistic elements into the music – helping the student to interpret a tune far beyond what they would be able to by looking at sheet music alone. Her goal is to teach the student how to become self-sufficient at learning music through relying on developed listening skills.

Kimberley’s ability to fiddle, play piano and step dance allows her to teach students how these components of the music relate to one another. Playing the fiddle for piano students provides a fuller sense of accompaniment, playing the piano for fiddle students gives the student a harmonic sense of the tunes, and playing the fiddle while teaching steps allows the student to adapt their speed and listening skills. Kimberley thinks that it is important to learn step-dancing to live music, “because ultimately you dance to live music, not recordings, and it’s important to get used to that spontaneity…”

Kimberley has a Bachelors of Music from Berklee College of Music, where she majored in violin performance, and a minor in jazz piano from St. Francis Xavier University where she majored in Celtic studies.