Hello!

Welcome to my teaching page. Music education has been an indispensable part of my life, helping me to grow into a better person. I believe music and arts education is for and should be accessible to everybody. With that in mind, I offer a range of options from private lessons to group workshops and classes as a teaching artist.  

I have a BA in music (composition & contemporary improvisation) from UC Berkeley and an MM in jazz performance (voice) from Manhattan School of Music. The degrees have come in handy as I continue to employ the improvisatory techniques from my training to daily life in addition to applying musical skills in my work as a composer/performer.

In voice lessons, you’ll learn healthy ways to support your voice through breathing and vocal exercises so that your voice can develop in a sustainable way. We’ll work on interpretation, phrasing, enunciation, and intonation on songs of your choosing (likely in the realm of jazz, bossa nova, and indie/singer-songwriter if you’re coming to me for lessons) and I’m happy to make recommendations based on your sound.

Private Lessons

Virtual or in person in Los Angeles (just East of Downtown)

• Voice, non-classical
• Composing, arranging & songwriting
• Gayageum basics (read my post on finding a gayageum teacher)

Lesson Fee

Payable by Paypal or QuickPay with Zelle to voice [at] joycekwon.com. (If using Paypal: please select the “Sending to a friend” option so that no additional fee is accrued.)

• $100 per 50-minute lesson

Scheduling

I’ll confer with you to find a time on weekday afternoons/evenings Pacific Time.

Teaching Artist

Joyce is an active teaching artist in communities local and around the web.

• Teaching general music, vocal music, and piano for K–12th around South LA
• Equity, Diversity, Accessibility & Inclusion committee at Young Musicians Foundation
• Toy piano channel Poytiano highlighted by Google Arts & Culture for Beethoven’s 250th
• Taught musical theatre workshops to second and third graders through Center Theatre Group
• Presented jazz assemblies to sixth grade and pre-K thru second grade in NYC public schools
• Presented workshop on Asian American advocacy and music to teenagers in Boston
• Taught music to indigenous young people in Amazonian villages along the Rio Negro
• Substitute taught gospel choir and assisted vocal jazz choir at LA County High School for the Arts
• Innovation artist & speaker/consultant for classical music fellows at Music Academy of the West

A minute-long clip of Joyce’s Poytiano class for young students through the Homeschool Co-op

A video of Joyce’s performance at the 2019 LA Asian Pacific Film Festival’s Itsy Bitsy Shorts program

Upcoming

A Search for Wholeness Through Song at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco

Saturday, May 6, 2023
Time 10am – 1pm
Tuition: $75
Register here.

We will usher the numen back into our lives through an interactive performance and workshop where we will write lyrics with guidance and sing collectively. No experience needed — everyone is welcome! Songs help us tap into the psychic power of a natural world that can feel out of reach in our daily grind; it’s both an individual and communal mode that can aid in processing brokenness and loss and
grounds us in our humanity with reminders of our inherent worthiness, untethered to expectations of a capitalist society. Reminiscing on the “deep time” of Richard Rohr, recreating “the sound that broke the back of words” from Toni Morrison, imagining Zhuangzi in love — we invite you to unearth your own stories.

“The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.” (Jung 1922, CW 15, ¶130)

Interested in lessons or having Joyce teach a workshop? Contact Joyce.