ABOUT TRICIA

Hello!  Here’s a bit of info about me, to provide some context for the various areas of my work you can peruse on this website.

First things first, and then working backwards…

I’m a mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother, and married to Eric Booth, my partner of fifteen years. And I’m an author and editor, a piano teacher, pianist, lyricist, and freelance journalist…an international advocate for universal, free, immersive music education…a longtime community arts activist in Maplewood, NJ, my hometown of thirty-four years.

My decades of experience (still ongoing) as a piano teacher have taught me that the one-on-one music lesson can be an adventurous and transformative space—hence my first book, Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson.  I’ve also enjoyed the vivid satisfactions and challenges of being a public school music teacher and an adjunct college professor of music history and music appreciation. 

 In recent years, I’ve been fortunate to travel internationally and to witness and write about a host of extraordinary programs dedicated to youth development through ensemble music-making.  As a result of this inspiring crash course in the power of arts education, I wrote two more books: Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music, and Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music (this one co-written with Eric).  I’ve also written many articles and given a number of presentations on this subject.  And since 2011, I’ve worked with a small staff to edit and produce The Ensemble, a newsletter/communications hub for the global field of music education for social impact.  

 These days, I love making music with my pop trio, Broadband, and with my classical piano-duet partner (Brahms and Gershwin are favorites).

An earlier phase of life was about working an office job to support other endeavors: publishing short stories and writing lyrics for musicals, jazz songs, and children’s videos in partnership with my first husband, composer/pianist Donald Johnston.

Going way back:  I earned my B.A. in philosophy at Yale University, as part of its second class of women; pursued graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music; and earned an M.A. in Historical Musicology from Columbia University.  Not so far back (I was older than most of my teachers), I earned a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Music Education from Boston University.