Celebrating Two Decades of Making Beautiful Music

In 1996, when Scott McGowan had dozens of students wait-listed for private in-home piano lessons, he convinced his wife, Harlene, to leave her sales job and join him in his fledgling music instruction school. They even hired another teacher the following year.

“It’s the only major piece of advice she’s ever taken from me,” Scott says, laughing. “She took to it like a duck to water and hasn’t looked back.”

Now, with about 30 part-time teachers offering in-home piano, keyboard, voice and guitar lessons for more than 220 students, the owners of Playtime Arts Academy of Greater Baltimore this spring celebrate 20 successful years in business together — and more than that in marriage.

Harlene, who could by ear identify any classical music composer by age 4 thanks to her Peabody Institute-trained father, Irving Davis, says it was her classical piano instructor of 12 years who showed her how not to teach.

“We have a much more child-friendly attitude,” she says. For example, she explains during recitals that the piano “is not going to blow apart if you make a mistake,” which elicits laughter from students and audiences, immediately releasing tension in the room.

“We know they’re doing the best they can, they get nervous. … So we blow bubbles,” she says, which allows students to take a deep breath, as well as creates a fun atmosphere. “We’ve called it Playtime Arts Academy for a reason,” she says.

The McGowans stress that their teachers are hired not only for their exceptional musical and teaching abilities, but also for how well they interact with children. “Like making sure students play music they like, in order to be truly motivated to learn,” Scott says. The lessons tend to be lighthearted, and instructors treat “students like they’re a whole person.”

Students might begin a lesson just after having a fight with a best friend, or maybe their parents are going through a divorce, or something really exciting just happened. Instructors are trained to pay attention to those cues, Harlene says. “That’s extremely important.”

Students range from very young children to adults, and a recent beginner is Robert Rivkin, Harlene’s former French teacher at Milford Mill High School.

Faust Arias and Root Beer Rags

This isn’t Rivkin’s first time on the piano bench, however. He began in high school but dropped it because other interests won out, such as studying languages. He’s fluent in several, including modern Greek, French and Latin. Rivkin believes learning music and languages are deeply interwoven, and he even taught a full-length opera in French to his high school students as a way to engage their hearts, ears and minds. He also used popular and classical music in his classroom.

“The whole idea was to take something like music that’s a passive activity and turn it into something that’s linguistically active,” he says. Rivkin was named Baltimore County’s teacher of the year in 1975, he says, laughing, “because I was the one who had most of the lacrosse team singing Faust arias as they were walking down the hall.”

Now, 77, living in Reisterstown and recently retired from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Rivkin returned to the piano. “I haven’t forgotten everything I learned,” he says, “but my hands don’t do everything they’re told to do by my brain.”

Says Harlene: “He’s very gifted, with a natural ear for music. He’s playing an incredibly difficult piece, ‘Malaguena’ by Ernesto Lecuona, and performing it in May.”

Another student, Christina Schweitzer, has been with Playtime the longest. She began at age 5, and now at 18 she’s also an instructor. Her sisters Gabriele, 16, and Veronica, 15, also study piano.

Studying with Harlene “is not so much like a lesson, but a fun experience,” says Schweitzer, a senior at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville. “My favorite thing is the way she sets up the lessons. … You play what you want to play. She would always make sure songs were interesting to us, not just boring.”

Schweitzer has performed many classical pieces at recitals, but this month she’ll play Billy Joel’s instrumental “Root Beer Rag” because she “wanted to switch it up and do something more energetic. … Learning music gave me perseverance. Harder songs take months at a time, and it’s so rewarding to play the whole piece.”

Home Delivery Service

Lessons at Playtime usually run from 30-45 minutes, depending on the student’s skill level, Harlene says. All lessons are conducted in students’ homes, which is very appealing to busy parents and creates a convenient opportunity for multiple children in a household to take lessons.

But most of all, Playtime Arts Academy is dedicated to providing skilled, engaged teachers.

After 20 years of experience, the McGowans say they understand that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

For information, visit playtimeartsacademy.com or call 410-654-9042.

Melissa Gerr is a local freelance writer.

Photo of Harlene and Scott McGowan by Melissa Gerr