Chaim Freiberg, Piano
Chaim Freiberg—Piano; Graduate, Rubin Academy, Tel-Aviv; The Juilliard School; soloist with orchestras and chamber ensembles in Israel, U.S. and Canada, accompanist and coach to singers in opera, lieder and Jewish vocal repertoire; composer of children’s piano pieces.
“I believe that the earliest contact, especially for young children, must be a joyful and vibrant experience that will move them with love and confidence towards the next steps in their musical development.” — Chaim Freiberg
As a young child growing up in Israel, Chaim Freiberg could often be found listening to the piano music streaming out the window of the local conservatory while his mother frantically searched for him. His early passion for music developed into a lifelong journey in music education, leading him to the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied and then taught. In 1973 he was invited by Dr. Tzipora Jochsberger to join the faculty of Kaufman Center’s Lucy Moses School (LMS), then known as the Hebrew Arts School.
“Lucy Moses School has been my home away from home for the last 35 years,” says Freiberg, who was honored by LMS in 1997 for his inspired and dedicated work with his students. “The school’s faith in my work has granted me the unconditional freedom that I needed to grow as a teacher.”
Over the years, Freiberg has created a personal musical vocabulary that gives his lessons with children as young as four years old a uniquely imaginative and personal feel. At the first lesson, “We both lift our arms high up, then out, so as to embrace the entire piano. From high up, I strike a key with a very ringing tone, foot on the pedal, and have the child respond by repeating the same key. As we continue in the same manner, a full musical phrase is being created.” Through these “piano conversations” or “conversational duets” he learns about children's musical abilities. “These immediate and direct interactions of give and take, making music together, inspire togetherness and mutual enjoyment of being the performer and the listener at the same time, a state desired by any performer.”
Freiberg uses stories to help bring the notes to life for his young students. Through short melodic patterns, he targets specific goals such as the progression of the key, note reading or rhythm. “Each new pattern is preceded by imagery or a short story that enhances the associative memory and deepens the learning process with a poetic idea. The story might be about nature, such as rain, rainbows, sunshine or colorful birds…Bringing vivid imagination into the lesson makes it a very special and much anticipated event for the children. I often talk to them as we play, improvising words to match the music and the rhythm. Quite often they will be amused by the result and ask to hear and do it again. It is a delightful experience to see how eager each child in a group of four-year-olds is to get their turn.”
All of Freiberg’s Young People’s Division students, who range in age from four to 18 years old, have been with him from their earliest lessons, he notes, “thus creating an uninterrupted continuity from those early spontaneous ‘conversations’ to the inner freedom I strive to impart to them as they play the great classical masters. Through the music they express their own inner selves. This is what I regard as the co-existence of the freedom within the structure.”
