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Music and Heart is a home studio in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn created from a collaboration of different musical backgrounds. Our practice utilizes unique and individualized methods that enhance the students' learning experiences through private music instructions, semi-private music instructions, first steps into the world of music, adaptive piano lessons for special learners, and solfege and more. Our goal is to provide flexible, positive, and creative musical experiences to expand the potential in students of all abilities.
We believe that music teaches us important life lessons more than we can imagine. As people who have been heavily involved in music, we have learned to feel, express, and grow through music, and still continue to do so. We feel joy in being able to use music as a mode of creativity and expression, and we feel grateful for the experiences in our lives that nurtured us this way. It is our pleasure to be able to share the gift that lasts a lifetime with our students, and guide them through their life discoveries.
It is essential for us to design and offer programs based on individual strengths, preferences and goals, where students can enjoy their learning processes and express through music. Enjoyable experiences can often be a motivation to concentrate on tasks, challenge themselves, improve their musical skills, and to follow their inner curiosity and explore - and we hope that throughout our programs, we can assist them to treasure their uniqueness, broaden their imagination, musicality and creativity, and embrace self-expression.
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TOMOKO SHIMIZU (MT-BC) Pianist & Board-Certified Music Therapist
Tomoko Shimizu is a board-certified music therapist and pianist born in Japan. She began piano at age of five, and solfege at age of six. She studied piano performance at Toho Gakuen Music High School in Tokyo, Japan. While she was at school, she was introduced to music therapy by the late Dr. Tomoaki Shinoda who was the executive director at Japan Music Therapy Association. After graduating, she started studying in Music Therapy at Kurashiki Sakuyo University, Okayama.
While she was at the university, she was awarded a scholarship from the university, participated in NMT (Neurologic Music Therapy) Training at Colorado State University. As a music therapist, she not only conducted individual music therapy sessions as well as small music therapy group sessions for elderly people with Dementia, and children with special needs. As soon as she graduated from the university, she started working as a full-time music therapist at an assisted-living facility in Mie, Japan, provided both individual and group music therapy sessions to enhance their quality of life.
In 2009, she entered Berklee College of Music, for which she was awarded the Berklee World Scholarship for four consecutive years, to continue her music therapy studies and pursue her career as a music therapist. She was also recognized for her excellent contributions to her home-town, winning the Mie International Exchange Award. After she completed a 7 months music therapy internship at an assisted living facility in Hartford, CT, she received her B.M. in Music Therapy in 2013. In the summer of 2013, she has moved to Brooklyn, NY and been working as a piano instructor/music therapist teaching piano and solfege for children and adults with and without special needs, and leading music group classes for preschoolers in Brooklyn, NY.
YUSUKE YAMANOUCHI Guitarist
Yusuke Yamanouchi is a Guitarist/Composer/Arranger born in Tokyo, Japan in 1978. His music education started since when he was five years old, taking private piano lessons. At the age of twenty, Yusuke Yamanouchi attended an art school based in his hometown, Tokyo. It was here that he found Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s album “undercurrent” which inspired him to learn jazz music. He then entered Iida jazz school in Tokyo to study jazz music formally. At Iida, he took many private guitar lessons and ensemble lessons from prestigious jazz musicians such as Toshiki Nunokawa, Koichi Yabori and Shyunji Takenaka. At the same time, he actively began playing live concerts in Tokyo, where he performed at famous jazz clubs, restaurants and concert halls with his group and various other renowned bands.
After his successful career as a jazz guitarist based in Tokyo, Japan, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 2009 to study Jazz Composition/Performance, to deepen his expertise, and to flourish his career as a musician at Berklee College of Music, for which he was awarded the Berklee World Tour Award throughout his school years. He has learned jazz guitar from the most famous, legendary and inspiring Jazz musicians in the world including of Brett Willmott, David Gilmore, Tim Miller, Tomo Fujita and Bruce Saunders, and jazz composition and arranging from pioneers in jazz such as Dave Johnson, Bob Pilkington and Jackson Schultz. He also actively participated in many concerts, benefit performances, and live music recordings. Moving to the U.S. has played a major role in shaping who he is today musically as well as personally.
In 2013, he graduated from Berklee College of Music, then he relocated to New York the most competitive city for jazz artists, where his career has flourished. He has actively started performing with many prominent musicians and groups at many well-known jazz venues in New York and New England area.