About the Teacher | Ally Larsen
I first fell in love with creating music at age 2 when my parents took me to early childhood music classes that exposed kids to musical concepts through play. Outside of class, my family and I were always singing. We would sing rounds in the car and lullabies before bed, make up our own songs, and dance to the beat of everything we listened to. Music was always playing in the home as I was growing up.
I have been playing piano for 17 years. I initially began teaching myself as I learned everything by ear which assisted me well as I started to read music. A couple of years later, I began formal private instruction, becoming trained in both classical as well as jazz studies. It was around this time that I picked up the guitar and ukulele and instantly fell in love with songwriting and accompanying myself singing which led to recording original songs. I jumped at any performance opportunity I could throughout middle school and high school, from playing on the worship team at church to performing in musical theatre to singing in a choir.
College exposed me to new outlets of musical expression. I attended North Central College in Naperville, IL where I received my B.A. and continued my private instruction in piano as well as classical voice lessons and private mentoring in music composition. Some of the highlights of my musical journey in my time at NCC included composing and arranging a piece for full orchestra and seeing it performed on the stage of Wentz Concert Hall as well as touring New York City with a women’s choir and singing on the stage of Carnegie Hall. In addition to studying music, I also studied digital communications and gained experience in video/audio editing and recording. My two worlds of music and media collided when I interned for a music licensing company in Chicago, teaching me more about sonic branding and scoring for film and commercials.
I began teaching private and group lessons in piano and voice in 2017 and instantly fell in love with accompanying eager minds on their musical journey. At the start of 2020, I began teaching early childhood music classes—the very same that I was enrolled in as a child!—which opened my eyes to the many ways of teaching musical concepts and aural skills to children through play and movement. I got to witness the beautiful variety of learning styles. I also found that many of the program’s techniques for training the ear and developing a sense of rhythm translated over to my private lessons and even worked on my older students! All of this further reinforced the idea that music is for everybody.
So… Why “Alleyways”?
Aside from it being a play on words with my first name, it represents the traveling aspect of this business as I bring my services directly to you! The name also represents the various alleyways to success and that there is no “one right way” to learn!
Liszt - Consolation No. 3
Ukulele Instrumental of “Creep”
Ravel - Sonatine, No. 2, “Mouvement de Menuet”
“Embark” - an original composition
Debussy - “Clair de Lune”
“Fly Me to the Moon” (Cover)
“Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.”
— Shinichi Suzuki