Mara Kelland is a licensed Simply Music Piano and Inner Musician Play A Story teacher. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from AUT and a Certificate in Freelance Journalism from the New Zealand Institute of Business Studies. Through all her studies, music was her constant companion and is her first love.

Mara was a Suzuki child studying the piano from the age of 7. She is also well-versed in the Kodaly Method of music education.

Zoltan Kodaly [1882-1967] was a Hungarian pedagogue and composer who theorised that music should belong to everyone and should be taught daily a long with Reading, writing and maths. Like Simply Music, it is developmental in nature focusing on singing folksongs as the way to learn initially, later expanding to classical forms when the student is ready.

Shinichi Suzuki [1898-1998] was a japanese pedagogue and self-taught violinist who studied in Germany where the seeds for his method were planted. He found German difficult to master hence his methodology focuses on the learning of music as we learn our native language. Early on emphasising listening and imitation expanding later to written music. All of this plays a part in Mara’s teaching style.

Mara loves folk music especially Irish music and feels that every musician should begin their life like this – being immersed in music as we are in verbal language. Indeed every musician does begin this way learning their native language and stories of their culture.

As a performer, Mara regularly plays with the band of the Auckland Contradance Club Inc, a group that promotes American folk art through the social/folk dance forms of contradance dating back to Puritan times. She also works as a therapeutic musician on wards of Auckland City Hospital. Primarily with older people who have contact with acute mental health services.