Life asks questions...

music has all the answers

Phil Best Classical Pianist

I'm Phil Best - award-winning RNCM graduate performing & recording artist - pianist, composer, producer & vocalist - and innovative piano teacher & singing teacher, offering piano, singing or composition lessons online or at home in my small but well-equipped studio in London SW6, Fulham / Hammersmith.

As a communicator and educator my passion is for music as a language that we can "speak" fluently to tell our inner stories. You can hear my music - pieces, songs and improvisations - on YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify and other streaming sites.

artist

I create across different genres — classical, jazz, using improvisation in both, and piano‑based electronic music. Each project explores a different facet of the same lifelong impulse: to explore the inner realm of feeling using music to bring clarity, solace, catharsis and pure freedom and joy.

3 Projects:

 

teacher

I teach music as a language — following simple rules to expressyourself in any style. Using a clear model of rhythm and tonality, I help students develop confidence, fluency, and a deeper connection to music, whether they’re beginning, returning, or working at a professional level.

I offer 3 distinct directions:

 

Fluency in the language of music as a means of authentic self-expression is the heart of my work both as an artist and a teacher

background

I was fortunate to have studied with two wonderful teachers - Ella Pounder until the age of 9, and Denis Matthews until the age of 18. They both encouraged me to discover real fluency in the language of music. From the age of 9 to 14, I had a conventional, strict, pressurising teacher. I rebelled quietly, and discovered my own clear, simple model of musical language - the one I now use as an artist and teach to others. Although I practised my model as a rejection of the pressure to achieve competitive success, paradoxically it enabled me to do well in exams and competitions. But most importantly it gave me access the joy of self-expression.

At 18, I went to the RNCM, studying piano with Ryszard Bakst, and singing with Vera Cross. There I performed in many public concerts, won awards and graduated with high marks but decided that a conventional career as a classical pianist was not for me.

So my work as a professional musician (artist, teacher, composer and producer) has always been unconventional. I always made fluent musicianship the primary focus. I've worked with many brilliant musicians and have an extensive, rich and diverse experience of music across different genres - classical, jazz and pop.

Symmetry, structure and natural flow

For me, the language of music has deep simplicity at its foundations. It follows a very simple model of rhythmic and tonal structure that is perfectly natural. Although we all have an intuitive sense of this structure, from a young age, I have trained myself to have clear, conscious awareness of it

This gives me the kinds of musical skills like improvising and playing by ear. My early fascination with the structure and symmetry of music led me to notice how rhythmic groove follows and unfolding matrix and how keyboard is laid out. This, combined with a passionate love of music formed my abilities. This experience of musical structure gives me a very deep grasp of how musical language works — I think in music. The expressive freedom this provides means that playing music directly from the body and soul is my absolute joy.

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life, bringing peace, abolishing strife."

 

­­­  - Kahlil Gibran

soul, not ego

Fluent music communicates directly soul to soul, bringing joy, solace and catharsis, even healing. So with flunecy as my goal, both as an artist and as a teacher, I regard the competitive climate of today’s music and music education industries as problematic. Being rooted in egotism, cold commercialism and status-seeking weakens the true purpose of music.

Having experienced early success as a young classical musician, I was hurt psychologically by the pressure of a system that feeds an insatiable hunger for prestige and rank within a hierarchical competitive realm. The continual process of healing— transcending these painful experiences — is a great opportunity for growth and insight, both as an artist and teacher. My believe my job is to serve the healing properties of music, using its extraordinary power as the language of inner feeling, telling musical stories that help us make sense of living in this complex and often troubling world.