NEW TAMPA — There wasn’t time for dreaming about the future when Dr. Judith Jain, founder and executive director of New Tampa Piano and Pedagogy Academy, was growing up in Cuba.
Based on her aptitude, she was chosen at 8 years old to train to become a pianist.
It was a grueling and competitive experience. The days stretched as long as 10 hours, with academics in the morning and musical training in the afternoon and evening. She could have been cut at any moment. The communist government wanted a return on its investment.
“The training is very strict,” she said. “They even have a chaperone making sure — they have training cubicles where you are supposed to practice and they have a schedule for you, you’re supposed to be there for three hours — and there is a chaperone going around, making sure you are practicing.”
That experience, combined with that of fleeing Cuba for the United States at 16 years old with her parents and her 1-year-old brother as political refugees, has made Jain who she is: tough, passionate, focused and driven.
“That shapes me as a person,” she said. “Because anything that comes later, you were like, I can handle this.”
Her father, who was a physicist in Cuba, was among a group of intellectuals targeted by the regime for their ideas.
“The moment they see any threat, they dismantle whatever is going on before it becomes a bigger problem,” she said. “So, he got put in jail for his ideas. He hadn’t actually done anything.”
Once settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, her biggest obstacle was English. She struggled to perform academically, not because of the material — her education in Cuba was excellent and she had a strong academic foundation — but because she couldn’t understand what was being asked.
She performed poorly on her ACT and SAT and afterwards received a letter informing her that she was unlikely to succeed in college.
“I’m like, watch me,” she said. “I mean, it’s because the SAT or the ACT were not a reflection of my knowledge or my perseverance or anything like that. It was just — the exam is tough, even for native (English) speakers. I knew it meant nothing.”
As a young girl in Cuba and a teen in the U.S., she never imagined what her future might hold. She’s glad she didn’t because her lack of experience would have made her dream too small.
“I couldn’t have dreamt of having this place or to have the career that I have or to have come to the U.S. or to have married my husband,” she said. “I mean, there is no way I could have planned this. When things happen, you just go for it.”
“This place” is a 400-student piano academy, with multiple grand pianos, employing nine masters- and doctoral-level piano instructors. She grew it from a single piano in her garage in 2011.
Nicholas Pallapati, now a senior in high school, has been taking lessons at the academy — with a short break when his family briefly moved to Colorado — since Jain was in that garage and he was in kindergarten.
He took lessons at his church in Colorado, but they were nowhere near the same quality. There was no big picture, no theory.
“When I was in Colorado, they didn’t teach me any of that. They kind of showed me music and these are the notes. Just read this and play and if you need help, I’ll just show you how to do it correctly.”
After completing her doctoral studies at the University of Cincinnati, Jain taught at the New School for Music Study in New Jersey for two years before she and her husband moved to Tampa. The school was founded by Frances Clark, a pianist and pedagogue, whose theories changed piano teaching.
It is Clark’s philosophy that Jain applies at her academy. She invests a great deal of time and care in training her instructors to teach in adherence to that philosophy, according to one of her instructors, Alexandra Olawuni. Jain believes anyone can play piano, that the talent should lay not with the student, but with the teacher.
Students are enrolled in both private lessons with an instructor 30 minutes per week and a group class every other week for one hour. Olawuni, who has taught at the academy since 2020, referred to this combination as a double education. She said it’s an important distinction between the academy and the private lessons people typically receive elsewhere.
Because they are learning from more than one teacher, they gain knowledge from multiple perspectives and from their peers. The group classes also help them gain confidence performing in front of others.
Rather than learning first one song and then another, students learn concepts like rhythm, sight reading, timing, notes, symbols, the theory behind music, learning to listen, why something sounds good or doesn’t.
“We want students to be musicians who have the skills to one day play any music they want to play, to be confident in any setting that they wish to use music,” Olawuni said.
She likened it to learning to play a sport. Just as kids are conditioned to respond to any scenario on the field, students at the academy are taught broad concepts and fundamentals so they can one day make music their own.
Pallapati, who will attend the University of Florida in the fall and plans to study computer engineering, said he has learned more than how to play the piano. He will take with him to college and into his future career the patience and perseverance he acquired in the process.
He plans to continue playing piano for fun, but he’s not planning to take any more lessons. When he has the opportunity, he plans to attend the all-faculty recitals the academy hosts twice a year, which are free and open to the public.
The most recent was held April 14, at the New Tampa Center for the Performing Arts. Olawuni estimated there were at least 300 people in attendance. The next one will most likely be in October. She said the performances are important because they inspire their students by showing them what can be achieved with hard work.