ABOUT EDNA
Julliard Graduate, World-Renowned Pedagogue, Institute Founder, and
Foremost Expert on The Taubman Approach
Edna Golandsky is the leading exponent of the Taubman Approach. She has earned wide acclaim throughout the United States and abroad for her extraordinary ability to solve technical problems and for her penetrating musical in-
sight.
She received both her bachelor of music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, following which she continued her studies with Dorothy Taubman.
Performers and students from around the world come to study, coach, and consult with Ms. Golandsky.
A pedagogue of international renown, she has a long-established reputation for the expert diagnosis and treatment of problems such as fatigue, pain, and serious injuries, including carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, focal dystonia, thoracic outlet syndrome, tennis, and golfer’s elbow, and ganglia.
She has been a featured speaker at many music medicine conferences. She is also an adjunct professor of piano at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Ms. Golandsky has lectured and conducted master classes at some of the most prestigious music institutions in the United States, including the
Eastman School of Music, Yale University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory.
Internationally, she has given seminars in Canada, Holland, Israel, Korea, Panama, and Turkey. In 2001, she was a guest lecturer at the European Piano Teachers’ Association in Oxford, England, and in July 2003 she conducted a symposium in Lecce, Italy.
In August 2010, she gave a master class and judged in a piano competition at the Chatauqua Festival. She was a guest presenter at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference in 2003 and 2009 and was engaged to return in October 2010.
In 2011, she was a guest presenter at the Music Teachers National Association in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Piano Teachers Congress of New York; and the Music Teachers Association of California. She gave week-long workshops at the Panama Jazz Festival at 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2012, she presented as a part of the New York University Steinhardt Master Class series and at the Music Teachers Association of California annual convention in San Diego.
For the past several years, Edna Golandsky has been working with violinist, Sophie Till, who came seeking relief from long-standing problems. This has led to developing a comprehensive application of the Taubman work to string instruments. Together, they went to England in 2013 to conduct a symposium for both piano and violin at Cambridge University.
Edna Golandsky is the person with whom Dorothy Taubman worked most closely. In 1976, Ms. Golandsky conceived the idea of establishing an Institute where people could come together during the summer and pursue an intensive investigation of the Taubman Approach. She encouraged Mrs. Taubman to establish the Taubman Institute, which they ran together as co-founders. Mrs. Taubman was executive director and Ms. Golandsky served as artistic director. Almost from the beginning, Mrs. Taubman entrusted Ms. Golandsky with the planning and programming of the annual summer session. She gave daily lectures on the Taubman Approach and later conducted master classes as well. As the face of the Taubman Approach, Ms. Golandsky discusses each of its elements in a ten-volume video series. Mrs. Taubman has written, “I consider her the leading authority on the Taubman Approach to instrumental playing.”
Edna Golandsky’s lectures have broadened the Taubman Approach and imparted it to many people who have come to benefit from it. As her knowledge deepened over the years, she continued to develop new material. She presents the Taubman Approach in its entirety in the ten-DVD set The Taubman Techniques. In conjunction with the Golandsky Institute, she has further developed the Taubman Approach in the three-DVD set, The Art of Rhythmic Expression, which has been praised worldwide; and the two-DVD
set, The Forgotten Lines: Lines that Support, Surround, and Intensify the Melody.
Over the course of her career, Ms. Golandsky has developed instructional materials so that pianists can have access to this body of knowledge. Almost a million pianists have viewed them. Also recognizing the common denominator between keyboards of all
kinds and that pianists’ injuries are applicable to all keyboard users, Ms. Golandsky established Healthy Typing, a consulting service to help relieve the heavy economic and physical damage that incorrect keyboard habits produce.
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Edna Golandsky and the Taubman Approach
After her graduation, Edna Golandsky continued her studies with Dorothy Taubman for many years, becoming her assistant and, later on, her associate.
In 1976, Ms. Golandsky conceived of the idea of establishing an Institute where people could come together during the summer and pursue an intensive investigation of the Taubman Approach. She encouraged Mrs. Taubman to establish the Taubman Institute, where, along with Enid Stettner, they held annual symposia over twenty-six years, with Ms. Golandsky giving the daily lectures and demonstrations.
While at the Taubman Institute, Ms. Golandsky recorded a ten-volume video series to give pianists and other musicians Dorothy Taubman’s transformative tools for physical health and musical expressivity. This video series has been disseminated worldwide over the last thirty years. Mrs. Taubman has written, “I consider Edna Golandsky to be the leading authority on the Taubman Approach to instrumental playing.”
Taubman Piano Technique - Instruction
Performers, teachers and students from around the world come to study, coach, and consult with Ms. Golandsky.
She has a long-established reputation as the pre-eminent expert world-wide for the treatment of problems such as fatigue, pain, and serious injuries, including piano carpal tunnel syndrome, piano tendonitis, focal dystonia and more. Her success in this domain is based on her ability to diagnose, address, and eliminate the root causes of these problems in order to cure them. The process of curing these problems leads the pianist to a technique free of symptoms and limitations – a natural technique, according to the Taubman Piano Technique.
Edna is unique in her ability to then put this technique in the service of musical expression. She teaches the technical and physical elements of tone production and of correct shaping, and shows how to combine these elements in the service of interpretation. She also teaches the physical aspects of rhythmic propulsion, to produce natural timing, breathing, and rubato playing. The physical elements of technique combine with these other elements of musical expression into one organism, enabling pianists to express their innermost thoughts and feelings about music without physical or musical compromise of any kind. This technique allows pianists to play pieces that were formerly beyond their abilities, and experience continuing growth previously considered unimaginable.
Lectures and Master Classes
Ms. Golandsky has lectured and conducted master classes at some of the most prestigious music institutions in the United States, including the Eastman School of Music, New York University, Yale University, Juilliard, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory.
Internationally, she has given seminars in Canada, Holland, Israel, Korea, Panama, China, Poland, England, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey.
Ms. Golandsky has been a guest lecturer at the European Piano Teachers’ Association in Oxford, England, has conducted a symposium in Lecce, Italy, given master classes and judged in a piano competition at the Chatauqua Festival and given week-long workshops at the Panama Jazz Festival and throughout China
Speaking Engagements - Music Medicine to the Taubman Approach
As an expert in the field, Golandsky has been in demand for many years as a lecture on topics from music medicine to the Taubman Approach to injury prevention, not only in the musical world but also in the workplace.
She has been a guest presenter at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference and at the Music Teachers National Association in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Piano Teachers Congress of New York; and the Music Teachers Association of California.
She has lectured at the New York Piano Congress and for the California Music Teacher Association.
Ms. Golandsky has also been a featured speaker at many music medicine conferences, including a music medicine seminar at the Performing Arts Medical Association (PAMA) in 2016 and a workshop to medical students at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in 2014.
The Golandsky Institute
In 2003, along with John Bloomfield, Robert Durso and Mary Moran, Ms. Golandsky co-founded the Golandsky Institute to preserve and promote the work of Dorothy Taubman for pianists and other musicians.
With her co-founders, she established a certification program to train and mentor teachers in order to develop and continuously improve their skills in playing and teaching the Taubman Approach on the highest level. The GI also presents workshops and seminars throughout the year and prepares and distributes instructional materials.
Development of Instructional Materials
As Ms. Golandsky’s knowledge deepened over the years, she continued to clarify and expand all of the aspects of the Taubman Approach.
Responding to pianists’ interest and realizing its enormous potential for both healing and technical virtuosity, Ms. Golandsky began to develop instructional materials almost from the beginning of her career so that pianists could have access to this body of knowledge.
She had already recorded the ten DVDs presenting a complete overview of Dorothy Taubman’s work. Then, as the work evolved over the years, she recognized that more explanation was necessary. To explain how technique works for components of musical expression, Golandsky created the three-DVD set, “The Art of Rhythmic Expression,” which has been praised worldwide, and the two-DVD set, “The Forgotten Lines: Lines that Support, Surround, and Intensify the Melody.”
In addition, Ms. Golandsky continued to create videos to personally demonstrate different aspects of this body of knowledge. In these short videos, Ms. Golandsky demonstrates the techniques for playing scales, arpeggios, leaps, octaves, double thirds and trills, repeated notes, Alberti bass and other common playing skills with efficiency and ease. She then shows how these skills are applied in piano repertoire, illustrating repeated note playing in a Scarlatti sonata, broken octaves in Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, arpeggios in the Mendelsohn etude Opus 104 #1 and the Chopin “Winter Wind” etude, slow playing in the Brahms Opus 117 #1 and more.
Over the years, close to a million pianists worldwide have viewed Ms. Golandsky’s instructional materials.
Work with Other Instruments
The piano world is not unique in the number of physical injuries. Practitioners of other instruments suffer from similar injuries as well. Ms. Golandsky has applied Taubman principles to help other instrumentalists as well.
Ms. Golandsky has followed Dorothy Taubman in the quest to help other injured instrumentalists who came asking for help. While there are differences in instruments, the common ground that they share with piano technique enables the Taubman Approach to benefit other instrumentalists as well. Working with them provided Ms. Golandsky the knowledge to help others.
For the past twelve years, Ms. Golandsky has been working with the violinist Sophie Till, who came seeking relief from long-standing problems. This led to developing a comprehensive application of the Taubman work to string instruments. Together in 2013 they conducted a symposium for both piano and violin at Cambridge University in England. Over the course of the last thirty years, Ms. Golandsky has worked with individuals on the violin, other string instruments, woodwinds, percussion and brass instruments.
Healthy Typing
Recognizing that there is a common denominator between keyboards of all kinds and that musicians’ injuries are applicable to all keyboard users, Ms. Golandsky began to help computer users, smartphone users and people with handwriting problems as well.
She established Healthy Typing, a consulting service to help individuals relieve the heavy economic and physical damage that incorrect keyboard habits produce. The Healthy Typing approach has been employed successfully over the last thirty years.
For more information, go to www.healthytyping.com.