Amabile School of Music

Amazing music school. Strongly recommended for children who are interested in learning a musical instrument. Great faculty and management.

We have tried the younger child / group music class as well as the private lessons. The teachers have impressive music and teaching credentials and our kids making great progress. I appreciate they have multiple lessons going on all at the same time in different rooms so I can bring all my kids in for lessons at their different skill levels. They host regular recitals in beautiful venues for the kids to showcase their talents. Overall I've been really happy with this music studio.

Called to register my grandson for trial violin lessons since school is in his neighborhood. I called 3-4 times and never got a call back until about 5 mos later!!! Enrolled my grandson elsewhere.

This is probably a one off occurrence with a substitute but the fact the company did nothing to handle the situation had me decide to pull my child out of their program. The instance is when the sub had aggressive verbal words towards me in front of my child. Simply because I wanted to sit in the same room to watch my kid. This action though presented in front of my child made her afraid of the sub teacher. At the quick chance when the teacher left the room to grab a stool, I asked my child if she wanted to continue seeing the fear on her face. Without hesitation, I took her and left.

My son has been studying piano here with various instructors for a little over three years now. I'm very happy with his progress. In fact, I'm writing this review while he is practicing "Scarborough Fair." He's come a long way since playing early pieces without chords. :)

The owner hires excellent instructors. That's one of the advantages of going to a studio instead of trying to find someone on your own. He's had the same main teacher for his whole time here, but every substitute teacher that he's had has been very good with kids. That's another advantage of a studio: weekly lessons whether or not your main instructor can make it. If you want to make progress at an instrument, you need to make a weekly commitment.

The system of instruction seems to be well-thought out. I like the main set of piano books that they use, and they also add other types of pieces--jazz, some pop tunes--so that he is learning more than just the classical style.

The teachers have also been willing to work with my son's interests. When he expressed an interest in playing Master of Puppets (not my idea ...) and Pinball Wizard, they found suitable music for his level so that he could give the pieces a shot.

Everything is really well organized. The shift to online instruction with COVID was handled very well. It's been easy to get online with the music teachers. We also get emails after the lesson detailing what he needs to cover in the following week.

I think the class makeup policy is completely fair. It is simply unreasonable to allow students to reschedule classes. For one, there is no space for it in a teacher's schedule, and it is unfair to ask teachers to reserve a couple hours a week for makeup slots that might be filled or might not be filled, effectively denying them compensation for those hours in their week. A teacher should not be robbed of income just because a family can't make a regularly scheduled time slot. And the makeup lessons they do offer are fine--they kept my son on track with his musical development, which is what I really want to see.

By the way, this is not just a studio for kids who love to practice and do so without being asked. My son is not always enthusiastic about practicing, but the teachers have done a great job of keeping him motivated and working with him on those days when he hasn't done enough or is feeling a little unmotivated. Also, the studio does a great job of using a rewards system to motivate kids to keep practicing regularly.

Getting music lessons can be a tremendous benefit for your child's mind and spirit. If you are thinking about music lessons for your child, but hesitant about the investment, take a look at the research that shows how music benefits cognition, memory, and mood. For a few hundred dollars a month you can potentially help your child get more out of school, as well as open up new worlds of possibility for career and social life.

Amabile is a great place to make that happen. Our family is very, very happy with how we have seen our son progress.

This school has the worst and unfair makeup policy of all the institutions that we have been to. Like previous reviews of this school, I also find their policy and the director Theresa Yu the director to be not customer centric and favors heavily the school financially. With their policy, what the customers end up paying per lesson is a lot more than what is on the paper or what you think.
All makeup lessons are group lessons by zoom, not in person. Their policy allows the teacher to cancel your lesson without obligation from the school to make up another in person lesson for you even though the teacher or school is the one who initiates the cancelation.
If the student needs to cancel a lesson, even though the teacher has a vacant spot due to a cancellation by another student, the school still does not allow you to fill that vacant spot as a make up lesson.

The school contacts me multiple occasions to ask if our lesson appointment to be moved to accommodate, but we ask to move our appointment a bit on rare occasions, the school never attempt to assist! Their response is always to cancel our lesson and do a makeup group lesson by zoom. And if you want the lesson to be with the same teacher, there are usually only 3 dates available over 3 to 6 months!! Even if you can attend one of those makeup group lessons by zoom, the quality of the lesson is not the same. You lost money there; and if you attend lesson given by a different teacher, that teacher has to start from scratch with you, you lost value/money again; and if you could not attend to any zoom lesson, you just lost the value of the entire lesson which is $72.5 for 45 minutes lesson at the time of this writing.

Lastly I need to make a comment about Theresa Yu. She is not customer centric to say the least. Communication with her is difficult. She has no perspective or understanding of where I come from. Making money or the bottom line seems to be her only purpose.

Update: the owner still treats customers' concerns as complains. Still no direct answers to address these legitimate questions. Pandemic is hard on everyone, it is no excuses for doing crappy business! We didn't even ask for a refund because refund could not address our questions. We would have asked the same questions regardless. We supported local business by donating our remaining credits of swim lessons, art lessons, afterschool, renewing our memberships without even using the service, and tolerating increased fees. We support our local business by all of above rather than by holding back from expressing legitimate concerns.

Yes, the rooms were new, but did Teresa go to see that digital keyboard herself? Did she play on it herself? It is simply not fair for any student to use such an old keyboard for in person lessons. We were surprised when we first saw it, so out of place, in this brand new facility. Even shuffling the rooms among teacher from time to time won't solve the problem. Some kid will still get to use this keyboard.

About the piano teacher's long nails (the teacher primarily teaches guitar rather than piano). I didn't think it was a big deal until our kid expressed his worries about piano duet because he saw the way the teacher touching the keyboard during the piano lesson. We were seeking ways to make it work (in my email to you, we asked to make sure the teacher could accommodate some form of duet, if not piano, guitar will do). Why was it treated as complaints? Nothing from our questions seemed to be treated as constructive suggestions to make the business better serving customers.


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The owner probably finds it is easier to say No to customers rather than working with them to address their concerns. This happened to us.

I do wanna say, the teacher is nice, but I am not sure how Teresa communicated with him about parents' concerns. Imo, Teresa poorly managed this school.

We had a trial piano lesson, which didn't go well due to this horribly old digital piano used in our lesson at Amabile school. The teacher kept apologizing about the sound of the keyboard. We decided to register anyways to make it work next time. Our kid then got a welcome package from the school and was told to take regular lessons starting from next week.

Teresa was initially nice enough to refund the charge for the trial lesson (this was unexpected). However, after we asked a few follow up questions that our kid raised afterwards, we received no direct answers from her. Instead, Teresa emailed us back saying they would no longer be able to book us any more classes.

The questions we asked are perfectly legitimate ones, showing how much we would like to make next lessons work:
(1) whether Amabile could prioritize the use of acoustic piano for in-person lessons. We saw other teachers doing zoom lessons yet occupying rooms with acoustic pianos without even touching or sitting at them.
(2) if the room is too small to fit an acoustic piano, whether they could replace the old digital piano with better one.
(3) Our kid noticed that the teacher having long nails. (because he's primarily a guitar teacher) so he worried about not being able to play duet with the teacher together (as many songs in the Faber book instructed). We told our kid that maybe the teacher could accommodate the duets by playing guitar. We mentioned this concern and asked Teresa if that's possible.

Teresa addressed none of above questions. Instead, all of a sudden we were told no more lessons would be provided for us. Considering that we had already been told to get regular lessons starting next week, such a sudden change was a total surprise to us. We cannot help but wonder, is it just because we care enough to asked a few questions?

Amabile is a fun place to be for the students. Amabile has a wide range of lessons in different instruments and teachers with varying teaching backgrounds and styles that will meet all sort of different learning styles. They teach both adult and young children and all ages in between! The school is open 7 days a week which makes it easy to schedule a lesson during your busy schedules. The school also has a wonderful program where the students can participate in to help motivate them to continue with practicing and improving even outside of the lesson time.

Amabile offers so many recitals throughout the year allowing the students to have some performance experience and most of the students can't wait to sign up for the next recital! The school has definitely grown during their 10 years in business and they're just getting busier!

To be honest, I like the school, the structure (music ladder system), the teachers, recital opportunities, ok parking (just walk abit), etc. I have also referred some friends here.

However, I am very upset about their class makeup policy. I found that their policy to be very one way and not customer centric at all. When the teachers needed to cancel on us, they offer us another teacher or we can do makeup extended lesson with our teacher (e.g. if you usually have 30 mins lesson, I can do 2 x 45 mins lesson to makeup) . However, when we need to do reschedule occasionally, they asked us to join a group makeup class (schedule is limited and not friendly), and they disallowed us to do extended lesson. I found that to be very unfair, and give me an incentive to look for other private teacher as they can be much more flexible. I once complained about this via email, but I never received a response.

Great and friendly teachers and staff. Love the recital opportunities and musical ladder system that motivates students to learn and improve!

I was a piano teacher at Amabile for almost 2 years from 2015-2016, ended last year when I moved out of town.

With my 9 years teaching experiences, I can say Amabile is the best music school I have ever worked for! Not only is the director Teresa a wonderful person and a great boss, she also truly cares about every students at the school and does her best to provide the best environment and music education to them. I was always impressed how Teresa keeps bringing in new systems and ideas to motivate the students!
During my job interview three years ago, I already realized that Teresa picks teachers super seriously and carefully. All my former co-workers are professional musicians with great personalities and patient, foremost, we all love working with kids!

I miss my time teaching at Amabile! Highly recommend this school if you are looking for the best music learning experience in San Francisco!