The Learning Experience
The Studio
It is our mission to provide a well-rounded learning experience for our students. Not only that we provide essential violin lessons to our students, we also prepare them for their choice of examinations. The current examination boards in consideration are the Royal Conservatory of Music (Canada), the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (England) and the Trinity College of London (England). With over 30 years in teaching experiences, our violin teacher is board-registered with both local and international examination boards including RCM, ABRSM and TCL.
Student Recital
To further enhance their experience in music performances, we also hold an annual student recital - an invaluable performing opportunities to all of our students in a real concert hall environment.
Lesson Format
Our violin lessons are weekly one-on-one private lessons.
Lessons are 60 minutes for each weekly session, or could be as short as 30 minutes depending on factors such as age, physical attributes of student, etc. This would be determined during the initial assessment session.
Parents or guardians of younger students are encouraged to sit-in during lessons, as we find that students tend to practise better at home if their parents are also somewhat familiar with the material.
The Teacher
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Simon Lau first discovered the joy of playing the violin at the age of 9. Under the tutelage of maestro Thomas Wang, Simon was considered a late starter by many, but quickly mastered the necessary skills and became one of the youngest members of the Hong Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra at the time. He subsequently became Concertmaster for the same orchestra and other ones as well. At the age of 16, Simon was one of the founding members of the award-winning strings chamber group “Bachanini”. At the time, Bachanini was one of a handful of youth chamber groups that had successfully performed without the aid of any conductor.
After arriving in Canada, he had studied under many master violinists, including the late professor Eugene Kash of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Simon has been a member of several music organizations in Canada, including the York Symphony Orchestra. Simon currently performs as the Concertmaster of the OCMS Symphony Orchestra, and also holds the position of Vice-President of the Ontario Cross-Cultural Music Society (OCMS) – a registered charitable organization in Canada. He is also one of the founding members of the Paskke String Quartet, which performs regularly scheduled concert seasons in the GTA area (including Aurora, Richmond Hill, Markham, City of Toronto, etc.).
Besides teaching violin lessons in a music school setting, Simon is also quite interested in the history of violin making and the appreciation of antique violins by master violin-makers of the world.