MUSICAL FLUENCY & FREEDOM
THROUGH DAILY CREATIVE PLAY ON PIANO
in every key | for everyone
sparked by Paris
🤍
Life, Love, Art, Poetry
& Café Culture
Whatever your music making dreams may be,
CHORD FLUENCY ON PIANO IS YOUR PASSPORT TO:
UNDERSTAND THE MUSIC YOU LISTEN TO, LEARN,
PLAY, & CREATE
PLAY AND IMPROVISE WITH CONFIDENCE & EASE IN EVERY KEY
CONNECT WITH AND CULTIVATE YOUR INNER WORLD & MUSICAL VOICE
MAKE NEW MUSIC MAGIC EVERY DAY IN YOUR HOME & IN YOUR LIFE
Music is meant to feed and fuel
your soul, imagination, and your life, daily.
And not just as a consumer/spectator of other people's music making.
Just as you make your own sentences to express your thoughts and feelings
every single day without thinking anything of it,
you are also meant to make your own music freely,
every single day.
In the Paris Creative Piano Café, you will build your true musical fluency,
first and foremost,
by internalizing the elements of music,
harmony, melody, & rhythm,
the way we actually learn language.
Not through rules and rigor.
But immersively, through creative and expressive play
in every key across the entire, musical, magical year!
What It Is.
The Paris Creative Piano Café is a
vibrant & reflective live online piano studio/laboratory
where your musical fluency and ease in every key
as well as
explore your musical voice and thoughts on piano,
slowly, expressively, naturally,
with time to tinker, ponder, and explore freelymaking your daily life a culture of
music making joy.
Through rich, meaningful and authentic musical offerings on the "menu" (daily improvisation, listening, and creative sparks), the relationships and connections between the chords in the context of each and every major and minor key are internalized.
In your hands, in your ear, and in your mind.
So that—in your life, no matter how you encounter music—by listening, reading notation, playing from chord charts, youtube, or making it up yourself—you can unlock it, get inside of it, and it can then become part of your ever-expanding inner musical universe.
WHAT'S INSIDE
A BALANCED MENU CRAFTED THOUGHTFULLY
TO EXPAND YOUR MUSICAL FLUENCY, FREEDOM, CURIOSITY
AND GENERAL CREATIVITY IN LIFE
WEEKLY OFFERINGS
Fall 2026
TUESDAYS
Explore, map out, and play with the notes and chords inside of each key.
One Major & Minor
Per Month
WEDNESDAYS-FRIDAYS
MORNING COFFEE:
Exploration & Improvisation
LUNCH LAMP:
Listen & Learn Micro Piano Piece: to Learn and Play by Ear
L'APERO:
Evening Creative Music Prompt
(come together, play and create!)
CREATIVE MUSIC BRIEFS
Weekend Invitations
to create, such as:
Recomposez-Vous
Weekend Operettinis
Seasonal Souvenirs
ADDITIONAL OFFERINGS
CHORD-ALONG SONGS
Play select seasonal songs in each key to play and sing along to and/or use them as sparks to make your own.
Can, like, just anyone write a song?
(Yes. In fact!)
AT SHAKESPEARE & CO.
For children of all ages!
Make Art & Music, Dance & Sing
as we explore beloved
stories and books,
old and new.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Follow Alice through the mirror and make curious music and art to accompany her adventures and the characters she encounters as she travels across the Giant Chessboard in Looking Glass Land.
BEATLESPLAIN ME
Celebrate and explore
the 60th Anniversary of Revolver on piano and join live for rare, insightful & passionate interviews with
Beatlesplaining
Master Songwriters Deluxe
who live & breathe to talk Beatles,
but their wives won't let them anymore.
ALWAYS OPEN
Hang out in the Paris Creative Café Community
(not fb. nor skool.)
Ask questions, share epiphanies, flâner, ponder, nerd out.
Be social,
or just sit in a cozy corner and take it in.
As you wish!
Curated by the OG
(Original Gymnopedist)
Erik Satie Himself.
BUT WHO AM I?
Coucou! I'm Hollie.
The Paris Creative Piano Café is the continuation of my Austin, Texas, independent piano studio, and is also the confluence of my lifetime of experiences and experimentation (so far) as a composer, classical and pop pianist, English language teacher turned music educator, lifelong lover of harmony, coffee, and Paris—and a mom!
THE STORY OF MY STUDIO
When I opened my piano studio in 2003, I suspected that my studies in Language Acquisition and my decade of teaching immersive English would be instrumental in bringing forth the music within my students, but I never imagined how so very much.
As my studio was growing, my own musical opportunities were also expanding as a pianist, and over the next ten years, I played, recorded and toured with composers and songwriters across genres, from modern chamber and ballet music to cabaret to pop & rock.
(Almost none of which included notated, written out piano parts—it was up to me to create what I would play :).
As I took on these adventures, questions emerged.
Taunting, torturing, cannot-sleep-at-night, questions like:
-
Could my students do what I do in a day, confidently and easily?
-
Could they play in a band, work out the chords and create their own parts to a song on the spot?
-
Could they compose or arrange their own music—without me?
No, not assuredly.
If they were going to be able to go in any musical direction they wanted in life, for all of these things and much more, what they needed most was real chord fluency, far beyond what they got from scales, cadences, playing repertoire, and just playing songs with chord charts. Something wasn't connecting.
As I pondered my students' plight, I began to see that my own accomplishments, awards and fun opportunities in music— only possible because of my deep and effortless understanding of music theory—were not the result of my work with my teachers or my music degree, but 100% because of a pre-existing condition—my chord fluency.
Something I myself had developed completely on my own, alone at our old piano, in the two years that I was waiting (impatiently) for my first classical piano lessons to begin, before I learned to read music.
I had never valued it or that time, as no teacher had ever acknowledged or cultivated it further in me.
Anything off script was a distraction from their own agenda for my piano lessons—amassing repertoire and technique.
But now these were MY students—these living, breathing, curious and creative young music makers entrusted into my care. Their fluency in the language of music, and the creative freedom and agility it sparks, became my absolute TRUE NORTH for the next twenty years.
Through experimentation and imagination, my time with my students began to resemble a language classroom more than a piano lesson. As my agenda was no longer how to "get through" their repertoire pieces, their curiosity and creativity emerged.
I have found that internalizing music this way is only possible with the students at the helm, not the teacher, and as I sought to create space for their own independence to surface, their musical lives grew beyond my wildest dreams. More importantly—they began to have their own creative musical dreams and felt empowered to take them on.
As the teacher/student relationship model dissolves, a creative collaboration emerges.
This is the story, and the mind and mindset, behind the Paris Creative Piano Café.
NOTES FROM
STUDIO FAMILIES &
MUSICAL COLLABORATORS
SARAH TEALE
NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS
Louis would sit at the piano for several hours a day tinkering with how different notes and chords sounded.
It wasn’t long before we traded our old piano for a better one because his playing was quickly becoming the soundtrack of our family’s life, and the quality of his creations were outpacing the quality of his instrument.
Because of Hollie, Louis will grow up not only knowing how to play music, but what it looks like to be a creator and a lover of music for the rest of his life.
ROBERT HARRISON
COTTON MATHER | FUTURE CLOUDS & RADAR
I met Hollie when she joined my band Future Clouds and Radar in 2006.
Straight away, she set the standard for what I wanted henceforth in collaborators.
Her knowledge of music is surpassed only by her enthusiasm for it.
I doubt I’ve met anyone in my life who loves music more--or is more the committed to sharing it.
You are invited!
Follow your curiosity.
Let music fuel your life!
Feed your soul. DAILY.
(as you rock playing in every key, growing your musicianship exponentially)
NOTE FROM HOLLIE
This is not a membership, but it does happen responsively in real time, live, with me and a vibrant private community of creative music makers like you!
If you join anytime before the end of September 2026,
you (and your family) receive lifetime access to the live café,
as it grows and changes for many years to come.
(It will always be in some sort of “beta”; always adapting).
Life is busy, and I want you to always be able to drop in and make music,
and not feel like you need to "pause" a subscription until you have more time.
You are always welcome. You won't be behind.
QUESTIONS?
What ages is this class for exactly? Is it for children or adults, or both?
In this program, are we learning just the basic chords, or jazz chords?
What musical level should I be at in order to do this?
So what's so wrong with learning music by reading, or by watching someone and copying? Everyone has different kinds of brains.
Do you have a refund policy?
So, do you actually live in Paris, or are you just a dreamer?
MUSIC,
like Paris,
IS A MOVEABLE FEAST.
And I invite you to STOP starving yourself.
(Like, stop getting by on mass-produced fast food, musically.)
YOU HAVE TIME
For a rich, real musical life.
When you are fluent in music,
you can truly go any musical direction you dream of, freely.
The PARIS CREATIVE PIANO CAFÉ
is here for you!
I can't wait to hear the music you make.
w/love, Hollie
