SIX DAYS out of the week, Esha Krishnamoorthy, 16, has no problem being patient. But that changes every Thursday afternoon as the vivacious voice and piano student anxiously prepares for her next music lesson with Mahjon Phillips, owner of Music As Language music school in Morgan Hill.
Three years ago, Esha was a timid singer. But with Phillips’ guidance and deepening friendship, she has grown into a more confident performer who can improvise. She has also written six songs, and this summer she attended the renowned Berklee School of Music in Boston for jazz sessions. Her ultimate goal is to sing professionally, a dream she said is slowly becoming a reality thanks to her Music As Language training.
“I count down the days until my next lesson with her,” Esha said. “Majhon has helped me find different genres of music, so I’m branching out.”
Phillips opened Music As Language in 2014 and moved the business to a storefront in Morgan Hill in September. She uses a non-conventional method of instruction that teaches students not only how to read music, but to also hear music. She says music truly is a language, and like verbal communication, it’s a form of expression that can be read
and written.
For centuries the foundation of music education has been to teach it note by note with students watching their teachers and then copying what they see and hear. But Phillips’ believes her method helps students commit what they’ve learned to memory.
“Learning by rote and through instruction books puts those lessons in short-term memory,” Phillips said. “Maybe years later, a person can still read notes, but the muscle memory is gone. This method puts music lessons in long-term memory by teaching students how to read and also how to hear music and then recreate what they’re hearing and improvising or speaking music on their own.”
Born an only child in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Phillips’ own extraordinary musical gifts were noticed early in her childhood. In 2001, at just 13 years old, she started a college music program at Southeast Missouri State University. She graduated from the college in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in voice and German and earned a master’s degree in educational policy and music education from the University of Illinois in 2010. She’s now a registered member of the Music
Teachers Association.
When her parents moved to San Jose in 2008, Phillips and her husband, Noah Wiseman, followed suit and moved to the Bay Area for his tech job in 2011. Phillips fell in love with Morgan Hill and decided it was the ideal place to start her music school. She gave private lessons in students’ homes for five years before her growing enrollment pushed her to open the new location.
Inspired by bassist and five-time Grammy winner Victor Wooten, who embraces the idea of students learning to play, hear and speak music as language, Phillips developed her own method of instruction based on the music as language concept. The method is customized to the student by focusing on the types of music the student wants to learn, which could be anything from Bach to Adele. It also applies to all students regardless of their career paths, Phillips said.
“I help students see their goals and use music to put them into action. That is the most important thing to me, because I want them to be successful in everything
they do.”
While traditional music books are used occasionally, the tailored approach makes students excited and curious to want to play or sing, according to Heather Faulhaber, voice and piano instructor. A Bay Area native and professional singer and performer, Faulhaber has years of experience teaching students of all ages and has instructed at Music As Language for one year.
“It’s exciting and gratifying to see students test themselves and perform for the first time or land leading roles in shows,” she said.
Ann and Bruce Pember’s daughters Brianna, 15, and Emily, 13, are two of the 75 students currently enrolled at Music As Language. The girls started private music lessons when they were very young and have taken voice lessons from Faulhaber for the past five years.
Ann Pember said she likes the sense of community within the Morgan Hill
music school.
“The girls have the freedom to select the types of music they like, and Heather is so nurturing that she lets them grow without pushing them,” she said.
Students can choose from piano, voice, music theory/composition, guitar and—something new—sound recording. Instruction is open to all ages and ranges from 30 minutes to one hour in private lessons or small groups. Of the school’s 75 budding musicians and singers, Phillips personally instructs 41.
“Sometimes my head is spinning to keep it all straight, because the school has grown nearly 300 percent,” she said. “And I realize how much of a blessing this school is.”
