Cortney Collins

(she/her)

Instructor: Piano.

Cortney Collins can’t imagine her life without music, and has to engage music daily in some form or else the day doesn’t feel quite right. She has been playing piano most of her life, starting classical training at age six. She will always be deeply grateful for that classically-oriented theoretical and musical foundation, but wanted to try new things and began to teach herself to play pop songs, Broadway musical tunes, and excerpts from movie scores by ear around age twelve. She revisited classical piano training in high school with the Suzuki method, and also dabbled in flute and cello. 

Throughout high school and early college, Cortney accompanied choirs, singers, and instrumentalists on the piano, and continued to develop her repertoire of songs self-taught by ear. She excels at ear training and playing by ear, and is excited to offer what she knows about honing that particular skill. 

In her twenties and thirties, Cortney played keyboards in a church praise band and two garage bands, and then turned her attention exclusively to poetry and spoken word performance for a decade starting in her early forties. She has taught poetry and poetry performance workshops in schools, local communities, and the corrections system, and her work has been published in several online and print journals. In the last couple of years, she has found her way home to music, playing keyboards for the local poetry band Brand New Queers. She is very excited to join the Butterscotch Studios community and share the skills she’s gained as a musician with students who find daily music as necessary as she does.