Artichoke Community Music Teachers

Allen Mathews

Music Bio

Local musician and teacher Allen Mathews is now teaching piano and guitar at Artichoke Community Music. He teaches all ages and ability levels, and currently has openings in his schedule for new students. Allen also teaches at Lewis and Clark College, and was recently awarded a Professional Development Grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council. 

“I have “played” music as long as I can remember. As a boy, I watched the Boston Pops. I built a bassoon from my “tinker-toys”. I beat on overturned trash cans with wooden spoons. I danced around the house treating a grill spatula striped with masking tape like a screaming electric guitar. I took piano lessons. To this day, my only trophy was the 3rd place one I took in the fourth grade at the Kiwanis Talent Showcase in my boondocks hometown, Americus, Georgia. My big debut, playing piano dressed somewhere between Don Johnson and Indiana Jones. I guess I’ve always been a glutton for attention.

But my piano teacher grew ancient (she was always old, as I recall). I switched to taking lessons with a truly frightful woman with a weird thing on her eye. I lost interest. It just wasn’t fun anymore. I took up electric bass guitar, and eventually guitar. In college, I studied classical guitar and percussion, also taking piano classes. I still take guitar lessons, and hope I will always have access to a teacher who challenges and inspires me.

And now when I look around I see how everything comes full-circle. Now I teach kids and grown-ups piano and guitar. Now I teach music at a college. And I continually see in my students the exact same trials that I have encountered and I suspect will always lurk on the horizon: lack of inspiration, something too difficult, not enough time, the task too overwhelming. Regardless of age, the same hurdles exist. But now I can also recognize some of the factors that contribute to this, and in both my roles as student and teacher, I find great enjoyment in the challenge of keeping things fun, keeping growth satisfying, keeping music “play”.

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