Education
Teaching people how to learn, not just what.
Over twenty-five years in the teaching room, in schools, colleges, homes and online, and the academy that grew out of it.
Featured organisation
London Music and Dance Academy
London MADA
Nimai has directed London MADA since 2012, when he took over the academy his father founded and rebuilt it from the ground up, with a new name and identity. It is an independent academy for music, speech and drama, chess and performance. It works with families, with primary schools across London and online, teaching from the very first lesson through ABRSM, Rockschool and LAMDA examinations towards diploma level.
The academy is where the philosophy on this page is tested every week. Its two pathways, one for capability and one for artistic identity, were designed by Nimai and are now shared by its teaching team.
25+
years teaching
2023
Classic FM & ABRSM Visiting Music Teacher of the Year
7
instruments taught, plus theory, LAMDA and chess
2023
A teacher on the Royal Albert Hall stage.
The Classic FM & ABRSM awards recognise the teachers behind the players. Nimai received the Visiting Music Teacher of the Year award for his work with students in schools and homes across London, from first notes to graded examinations.
Areas of expertise
What he teaches
Instrumental music
Piano, violin, cello, flute, guitar, clarinet and drums, from first lessons to diploma level.
LAMDA speech and drama
Verse, prose, acting and public speaking, with the confidence that comes from standing up and being heard.
Music theory
Taught as a language to be used rather than a set of rules to be feared.
Chess
A training ground for patience, calculation and the humility to lose well.
Creative learning
Composition, improvisation and playing by ear, so that technique has somewhere to go.
Student development
Discipline, resilience, independence and the ability to teach yourself the next thing.
Teaching philosophy
Learn how to learn
The method underneath the lessons, developed over decades in the teaching room and practised every week at the academy.
Music is unusually honest. A method either works or it doesn't, and you can hear which.
- 01
Process over talent
The decisive difference between learners who flourish and learners who stall is how they practise, not what they were born with. Method can be taught.
- 02
Capability and identity
A student needs to grow in two directions at once: what they can do, and who they are becoming as a musician or performer. Exams measure the first. Lessons must also serve the second.
- 03
Accuracy, consistency, fluency, ease
Mastery moves through stages. Technique exists to remove the barriers between what a student intends and what they can express.
- 04
Three repertoires
One piece you can play now, one you are growing into, one you dream of. Pieces accumulate rather than being abandoned after each exam.
- 05
Consistency beats intensity
Fifteen honest minutes a day outperforms a heroic Sunday. The system is designed around what people will actually do.
- 06
Transferable by design
What works for a scale works for a language, a sport or a career. The point of learning music is partly to learn how to learn anything.