Teacher Spotlight: Steven Boone, 15+ Years Teaching Piano, Guitar, and Voice in Washington and Virginia

Steven Boone has spent his life around music, and he is quick to say he is still learning it. He teaches piano, guitar, and voice, and after more than fifteen years of teaching he still talks about the work the way a lifelong student would, curious and glad to be in the room. Some weeks he is on stage as a touring guitarist. Other weeks he is beside a five-year-old meeting the keyboard for the first time, and he gives both the same attention.

A Lifelong Student of Music

Steven started on piano at six and found the guitar at eleven, and the pull never faded. He was first chair in his high school jazz band, turned down Berklee and Belmont to study jazz guitar at Virginia Commonwealth University, and left college already playing beside musicians who would go on to earn Grammys. Since then he has toured as a lead guitarist and vocalist, backed tap legend Savion Glover on stages from New York City to Mexico City, and released a solo album, “Soullow.”

The performing never pulled him away from teaching. He has been giving lessons since his college years, and the two feed each other. Steven believes every musician stays a student for life, himself included, and he means it plainly. Study changes as you get older, but it never ends. Some of what he knows about teaching, he says, came from the students sitting across from him.

What He Wants a Lesson to Feel Like

Steven teaches the student before he teaches the syllabus. He pays close attention to who a child is, what they are drawn to, and the kind of player they want to become, then shapes the theory, ear training, and technique around that. His grounding in jazz, funk, and contemporary music keeps a lesson from becoming a march through a method book, and it leaves room for the creativity and confidence he is after.

What he hopes a student walks away with is bigger than any single piece. He wants them more capable and more willing to play for the plain joy of it, long after the formal lessons end. He calls teaching a privilege, and he likes the thought that the kids he works with now are quietly writing the soundtrack of the years ahead.

Care for the individual student is what the relationship between a teacher and a student is built on, and it is what Lessons In Your Home tries to protect in every match. A lesson that meets a child where they are on a given day, where confidence and enjoyment matter as much as a clean performance, is the kind a student wants to return to.

Teaching Across Washington and Virginia

Over the years Steven’s teaching has reached beyond guitar and piano. He works with voice students too, along with bass and a few other stringed instruments, and his students have ranged from four-year-olds to adults in their sixties.

His roots as a teacher run through this region. He led guitar, piano, bass, and percussion instruction at the Shady Grove YMCA music department just outside Washington, and served as after-school director of piano studies at Basis Independent McLean in Northern Virginia, alongside steady session and stage work around the area. Today he offers music lessons in Washington, DC and across Virginia through Lessons In Your Home, which fits a musician who has always believed music belongs in the middle of everyday life.

Find a Teacher Who Fits Your Family

A teacher like Steven pays attention to the child first, adjusts to how they learn, and makes an instrument feel worth coming back to. Finding that fit is the part Lessons In Your Home has taken seriously since 1997, matching each student to a teacher by instrument, personality, schedule, and the way they learn. If you are thinking about lessons for your child, tell us a little about them, and we will help find the one who fits.