New Music Studio on Charles

The first things you see when you walk into Hannah Reimann’s studio are a tall bookshelf filled with Classical piano and vocal music scores and a lovely walnut Steinway Grand Piano. Beneath the piano there are Tibetan singing bowls, cushions for sitting and hand percussion instruments stored inside a large wooden bowl. Asian prints hang on the white brick walls and antique German books and LPs hint at her half-Korean, half-German heritage.

Since moving her teaching and rehearsal studio to an inviting ground-floor storefront at 101 Charles Street in early February 2018, she, her students and collaborators are enjoying the unique neighborhood quality of the West Village. An Open House there in mid-March attracted students and friends who spoke of bringing the artistic spirit back to the neighborhood, creating musical gatherings, poetry readings and open rehearsals with people of like minds. Presently, the Charles Street studio is home for over two dozen voice and piano students of all ages, most of whom come every week for lessons and participate in two annual student concerts. Hannah’s students have played concerts she produced for over 20 years, sometimes in Midtown at Steinway Hall. She is an official Steinway Educational Partner, a piano enthusiast with a history of creating community around Grand Pianos and live music.

Hannah began her career as a concert pianist, having studied with a lineage of teachers that trace back to Beethoven, and over the past 20 years became a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger and filmmaker, most notably for her recent documentary, My Father’s House, A Journey of Love and Memory, available for sale online at Terra Nova Films (http://terranova.org/film-catalog/my-fathers-house-a-journey-of-love-and-memory/) Having lived here briefly as a college student, she moved to the Village in 2003 and attended HB Studios to study with Austin Pendelton, playing solo piano at Caffe Vivaldi on Sundays afternoons. After cutting her teeth on over 20 independent film and theater productions as an actor, she directed, produced, composed music for and plays parts of the soundtrack for her film, “a masterpiece of love and forgiveness” (Mark Sommer, A World of Possibilities), inspired by her father and his journey with dementia and end-of-life experiences. That experience also gave birth to her retrospective of the music of Joni Mitchell, “Woman of Heart and Mind.”

“I wanted to sing Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue, to heal from the sadness and pain I felt for my dad,” Reimann says. That project led to performing over 30 of Mitchell’s songs on piano, dulcimer and guitar together with her collaborators, namely guitarist Michele Temple and up to 8 additional players at larger shows. She is now at work on a new recording of original songs and a series of books for her students. Some of them are serious Classical players and some have been heard on Broadway and touring stages (Matilda, School of Rock, Mary Poppins, The Boy from Oz). Her goal is that they love what they do and to infuse their 21st century lives with timeless passion for music and culture.