Meet our teachers

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Matthew Tzivakis is a passionate guitarist, who loves all kinds of contemporary music. He is currently studying the Bachelor of Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, which he will complete by the end of this year. He studies contemporary guitar with Doug de Vries.

Matt works predominately as a session musician. He has worked with a few bands playing big band music, but you can usually find him in the pits of Melbourne. He has played for many school and community theatre musicals, some of which include ‘Grease’, ‘Edges’, ‘The Wiz’, ‘Matilda’, ‘The Wedding Singer’, ‘Godspell’, ‘We Will Rock You’, and ‘High School Musical’. Matt is also a passionate Music Director, and last year he was the Music Director for an amateur theatre production of Lionel Bart’s ‘Oliver!’. He also has extensive knowledge of music theory, and both writes and orchestrates his own music.

Matt studies all kinds of music, and spends a lot of time playing blues, country, rock, pop, solo guitar, and fingerstyle guitar. He believes that in order to be a well-rounded contemporary musician, a guitarist needs to spend equal amounts of time with the electric guitar, as well as the steel string guitar, and even the nylon string. These guitars all have their distinct differences (sound wise and playability wise), and it is in a contemporary guitarists best interest to learn all kinds of repertoire. He spends a lot of time learning fingerstyle pieces, because he believes that they have many benefits. Not only do they refine a guitarists technique, but they also refine a guitarists musical ear. Rather than playing chords or a melody line, fingerstyle guitar requires both. This trains the musical ear, because a guitarist needs to hear everything that they are playing; the bass line, the accompaniment, and the melody on top.

Matt is an experienced music teacher, with three years’ experience. Matt cares deeply about what his students want to learn, and he tailors his lessons to meet their musical interests and goals, whether they want to play guitar as a hobby, or it is their intention to become a professional musician. These lessons can include music theory, sight-reading, improvising, comping, soloing, transcribing, accompanying, or a mix of everything. Matt just wants to see his students achieve their musical intentions.

Matt’s musical influences include Andrew Lloyd Webber, Led Zeppelin, Steve Vai, Queen, ABBA, Tim Minchin, Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins, and Giacomo Puccini.

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