ABOUT EDNA

Julliard Graduate, World-Renowned Pedagogue, Institute Founder, and
Foremost Expert on The Taubman Approach

Edna Golandsky is a world-renowned piano pedagogue and the leading exponent of the Taubman Approach. She has earned wide acclaim throughout the United States and abroad for her pedagogical expertise, and for using the Taubman piano technique. She is also known for her extraordinary ability to solve technical problems and for her penetrating musical insight.

Ms. Golandsky started piano study in Israel at the age of eight. A gifted pianist, she played recitals at the age of ten and was performing with orchestras by the age of twelve. Ms. Golandsky came to the United States when she was sixteen years old, and was immediately accepted to the Juilliard School in their Preparatory Division.

She remained at Juilliard for the next eight years, studying with Jane Carlson, Rosina Lhevinne and Adele Marcus, and graduating with bachelor and master’s degrees in piano performance.

Edna and her work have been featured in The New York Times, Classical Music UK, Pianist, The Strad, Cadence: Jazz World Magazine, Authority Magazine, Piano & Keyboard Magazine, Interlude, TopMusic, Piano Marvel, The Clavier Companion, New Work Weekly, Thrive Global, and The Cross-Eyed Pianist among others.

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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.