Edna Golandsky on the Taubman Approach

Pain is all too frequently an occupational hazard for many musicians. Pain levels can range from debilitating to a mere ache on a good day, but it is rare to find a performer who has never experienced any injuries through playing.

The Australian pianist Therese Milanovic struggled to play for almost a decade because of tenosynovitis in her thumb. Passed from treatment to treatment, she despaired: ‘When it first occurred, there was no thought from anyone that it could be linked to how I played the piano. I was advised to have a cortisone injection but of course the problem returned when I continued practising with the same injurious movements in my technique.’

‘I was advised to have surgery but again my problems returned. Later I had an undiagnosed pain all through my right hand, forearms and upper arm, coinciding with glandular fever. During this time, the arm pain actually jumped sides to also affect my left although I wasn’t using my hands at all.’

The interventions weren’t curing her symptoms, and nothing was addressing the root cause of her problems. She recalled: ‘Having been passed from specialist to specialist I was facing the reality that I probably had to choose an alternate career path that didn’t involve my hands. Fortunately, a close friend was studying in the US, and after seeing Edna Golandsky give a workshop on the Taubman Approach, she persuaded me to come to America before giving up on the piano.’

What Golandsky is doing at the New York-based Institute, which she founded in 2003, is providing musicians with a foundation that allows full artistic expression alongside the development of pain-free virtuosic technical ability.

Through lessons, lectures, masterclasses, performances and symposiums, most of which are now online, musicians and teachers work with Dorothy Taubman’s body of knowledge which, says Golandsky, ‘can lead to an effortless and brilliant technique and prevent and cure fatigue, pain and other playing-related injuries.’

It’s an approach which has worked well for Therese Milanovic who after one month, two symposia and seven lessons had overcome the pain which threatened to end her career. ‘I was still technically very limited, and I’d only skimmed the surface of Taubman work, but I was able to complete a Masters in Performance and later a PhD on the process of becoming a Taubman instructor’.

This story is dramatic but far from unique as Golandsky will testify. She was taught by the Approach’s founder, Dorothy Taubman, and now runs the Golandsky Institute. ‘Performers can realise their potential when the pain has gone, and so too have their emotional problems’. She added: ‘There is a tradition in piano teaching of working on isolated fingers … you curl your finger and when you do that, you pull on the long flexor muscles up to your elbow. This, of course, gives you a tight wrist and your fingers stretch and of course, you feel tense. By understanding this, you can avoid the movements which create these problems.’

Like Milanovic, Edna Golandsky fell upon the Approach by chance, through a friend. Before meeting Dorothy Taubman, Golandsky’s conservatory studies were at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She said: ‘I started on my undergraduate studies knowing nothing. I went on to my Masters, working at the high end of the literature. Yes, my arms got tired, but I was happy. Meanwhile, my roommate, also a pianist, was working with a scientific method … (science isn’t a word you often here in this context) … and I really wasn’t particularly interested. But her playing was getting better, and she was performing more difficult pieces. She was insistent I watched a lesson of the Taubman Approach … and when I did, it was absolutely shocking!

‘You could ask questions, the teacher wouldn’t say ‘that’s not my problem’ … there were local answers to every issue … and the answers were always physical, not mental. Sometimes, she found, there is a straightforward correlation; this movement causes this result. In more complex situations, layers have to be peeled away to uncover the problem.’

The approach has worked well for the performers quoted in this article and for countless others, many of whom have left glowing testimonials with the Institute. But does it work for everyone?

Milanovic is not speaking for others but from her own experiences and from her long research into the approach and she has no doubts. She said: ‘My nine years of playing-related injury were dark times. I identified myself first and foremost as a pianist and struggled when there was seemingly no way of pursuing my passion of a career in music.’ She added: ‘Studying the Taubman Approach has literally given me my life back. There is a great joy in being able to pursue my dreams and there is great satisfaction in helping others do the same.’

‘The problems Milanovic describes are felt by musicians all over the world,’ said Golandsky. ‘Pain for musicians is a global problem and during the pandemic we have all been brought together by working on Zoom. There are thousands of us out there and the Institute now reaches more than 500 students in 40 countries. When those students are able to truly marry technique and emotion, that is when they can really move an audience.’

‘Musicians must understand pain is not inevitable,’ she continued ‘When the pain has gone, you have an opportunity to reach your potential and, in my experience, you will also find that the emotional problems that come with the pain, from the inability to play as you want, they will disappear too.’

Edna Golandsky is understandably proud of the testimonials praising the approach. ‘Musicians say how their performance, their attitude, their emotions have all changed for the better because of Taubman.' But what also makes her happy is when she gets letters from the partner of a student saying it’s changed their life too. ‘Taubman shows that there can be a better way.’

You can watch a video of Edna Golandsky demonstrating the Taubman method here.

You can find out more about Edna Golandsky at her website.

You can find out more about Therese Milanovic at her website.