ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrew Eales

Andrew Eales studied as a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music (London) and at the University of Birmingham, where he gained a B.Mus honours degree in 1987, and then at the Royal College of Music. There he gained an A.R.C.M diploma, and won the Geoffrey Tankard Memorial Harpsichord Prize and the Raymond Russell Memorial Harpsichord Prize. He has performed widely as a harpsichordist, classical pianist and keyboard player.

Andrew began teaching the piano and electronic keyboards to friends and local children when he was just 15. In the early 1990's he decided to pursue a full-time career as an instrumental teacher, building on his established private teaching base. By the mid 1990's he had started to gather and build a team of teachers to work with him for the emerging keyboard faculty at Milton Keynes Music Service, delivering his rapidly expanding keyboard teaching programme in schools. He formally accepted the newly created role of Keyboard Co-ordinator in 1998.

Andrew's two Keyboard Conquest tutor books have been widely acclaimed, selling thousands of copies throughout the UK. He has also recently been a member of the steering group and co-ordinated the electronic keyboard schemes of work for A Common Approach 2002. The new instrumental curriculum which is being widely adopted. He has visited several Music Services across the country as a guest speaker at teacher training days, including East Sussex, Swindon, Wigan, Oxfordshire and Croydon. He is a trainer on the Guildhall School professional development programme, and has undertaken work as a consultant for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.

In recent years Andrew has continued developing new keyboard based projects and ideas, notably large class teaching approaches incorporating “peer-teaching”, and keyboard ensembles, pioneering a musical format he has called KeyBand. The MKMS Premier Keyband now travels with Andrew to give demonstrations, concerts and workshops.