Tina M. Huard

Guitar Teacher

Tina Huard

SAA Member

Contact

Stonington, CT
860-694-9723
[javascript protected email address]

I fell in love with the guitar when I found a beat-up old archtop in my grandmother’s attic. I was maybe three or four years old. The guitar had a couple of rusty strings and probably weighed as much as I did. I did not grow up in a musical family yet I would sit for hours looking out the window, strumming and dreaming about music, and the guitar.

It was many years later, after much longing on my part, before my parents could afford to purchase a playable guitar for me – mail order, nylon strings! As fate would have it the only guitar teacher in Mystic, the town I grew up in, taught what used to be called ‘Spanish’ guitar. I began learning to read music while all of my contemporaries were playing the popular folk and rock songs of the 60’s and 70’s, and I loved it: my serene, meditative, peaceful private world, my sanctuary.

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I met my next teacher, Darlene Marcolini, and it was nearly a full decade later that I was fortunate enough to study formally at Connecticut College with Jim McNeish.

After college I became a counselor and the guitar, although always a daily practice, was not my primary focus. I wanted to support my family and did not believe I was skilled enough as a musician to do that. After my youngest daughter left home the imperative to play yet again took hold…I heard the distant bell of my destiny and hence my longing to study and to teach was awakened. At forty-three years old I left my position as a counselor and headed up to Hartt where I met Alan Spreistersbach and after him Judy Handler and eventually David Madsen and The Suzuki Method. For the next thirteen years I taught at a private music school and eventually opened my own studio.

Six years ago my family and I suffered a tragic loss. I thought I would never teach again. I played for hours a day yet to hold the guitar to my heart in the presence of students was more than I could bear.

Which brings me up to the present day.

An imperative: that which cannot be avoided or evaded and consequently is necessary. This is my experience with the classical guitar, it is as necessary as thinking and feeling and breathing. No matter how far afield I have gone, I am always beckoned back by that experience when I was so young, the inexplicable and abiding love of the guitar, of playing of studying and of teaching.

As I mature I realize and honor the impact that all of my teachers and their specific teachings have had on me. I am looking forward once again to being that for others.