About Allegra

I have been teaching music to adults and children in the Bay Area for almost 20 years and am passionate about teaching. I offer group acoustic guitar classes as well as private lessons on guitar and old time banjo at my home studio near the Oakland/Berkeley border. In my studio, I work predominantly with teens and adults. I am an enthusiastic advocate for adult music learning. I am dedicated to meeting the individual needs and desires of my students, working with musicians at all levels of skill and and exploring a variety of musical styles and interests. In my lessons, I will balance new challenges with skill reinforcement. I offer music theory and technique as important tools along the way, but creating a satisfying musical experience is my priority.

I was born into a family of professional musicians. My father was a jazz saxophonist and my uncles and grandparents also worked as musicians. While I studied music and performed some in high school, I didn't start a serious pursuit of music until well into adulthood. I have spent the last 25 years improving myself as a teacher and musician: studying guitar, saxophone, banjo, fiddle, and piano (in that approximate order). In spring of 2020, after 7 years of study, I completed a masters degree in music education at Holy Names University in Oakland.

When I moved to Oakland in 1999 I began teaching music and movement to new parents and babies with East Bay Music Together and started playing the guitar more seriously to accompany myself singing and performing. While studying at the Jazz school in Berkeley, I developed an obsession with early American roots music of the south and took up the banjo and, soon after, the fiddle. Over the years I have performed and collaborated with many wonderful oldtime musicians such as Suzy Thompson, Evie Ladin, Karen Heil, and Jordan Ruyle. I played guitar for the The Disciples of Markos, a greek rembetika band, and enjoyed singing with the Florid Ians, performing the contemporary music of local composer, Graham Connah. For more than 10 years I have been playing guitar with the Squirrelly Stringband, the house band for the North Oakland Sqauredance, shut down due to covid.