About
Dr. Felix Eisenhauer is constantly exploring how music can be a driver of positive change to unite and empower individuals. Everyone has an inner artist waiting to be discovered and he uses his expertise as a musician and community leader to guide people on their journey of discovery.
As a teacher, Felix provides the space and patience students need to develop the strong technical and theoretical foundation that allows students to understand the music they are playing and, ultimately, discover rich emotional connections. He runs a private piano studio and is Professor of Music at Ventura College. In his private studio, Felix teachers older students (teens and above) through keyboard harmony. By building technique through the study of harmony, students become sensitive to the various feelings different sounds (harmonies) can produce. This quickly and naturally invites students, even beginners, to be composers and explore the relationships that exist between harmonies. It is with this awareness that students are able to look at the dots on the page that make up a piece and explore questions like "why did the composer make this choice? What are they trying to express and how?" Younger students are invited to explore music through a new piano method Felix wrote based on composition. This method reinforces music fundamentals (e.g. notes and rhythms) by showing students they are creators of music, not just re-creators of repertoire. At Ventura College, Felix used his pedagogical approach in private lessons to created an online, asynchronous, four-semester piano class sequence to make learning these skills more accessible to students. The clear sequencing of material and engagement of students as creators have resulted in classes that remain the preferred format for piano class at the college, even as in-person resumed. He also mentors young adults starting their music careers. Here, his focus is on developing self-employed business practices that support their careers; strong music skills will only get them half-way there. It is crucial that these young adults view and run themselves as a sole-proprietorship so they can direct and market their skills successfully.
As a performer, Felix' work in recent years has been focused on music in the church at St. Paul's Episcopal. As a pianist, he provides music with meaning and uses classical, modern, and African-American genres to connect with diverse people. This has resulted in one major ongoing initiative titled "Inspirations: music to calm, inspire, and rejuvenate." What started out as individual pieces has coalesced into a living album concept of modern piano renditions of favorite hymn tunes on YouTube crafted and performed by Felix. There is no set format for the pieces beyond the concept of calming, inspiring, and rejuvenating. Selected hymn tunes are explored and then arranged, composed, or improvised over. incorporating everything from Mozartean arpeggios to Debussean harmonic sweeps or contemporary pop rhythms. Presenting the pieces as a YouTube playlist album, rather than traditional fixed media albums, allows for great flexibility and experimentation, as well as permits the idea of "Inspirations" to evolve and meet changing needs over time. "Inspirations" can be heard here for free. Trained as a classical pianist, Felix not only draws inspiration from the rich classical heritage of the piano for his modern hymn renditions, but actively seeks to connect people with works by master composers, such as Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, or Satie, by regularly offering works during services. Felix also highlights the rich African-American music traditions found in America by studying Gospels and Spirituals so the Music Ministry is able to offer authentic renditions of these songs and hymns. Before moving to Ventura, Felix lived in Boise, Idaho, where he played for all the major music organizations in the area, including Opera Idaho, Ballet Idaho, Boise Philharmonic, Meridian Symphony Orchestra, Music Theatre of Idaho, and the Broadway tour of Wicked.
As a community leader, Felix is an elected official, serving on the Board of Trustees for the Rio Elementary School District and as the Music Minister at St. Paul's Episcopal in Ventura.
In this role, he supports policies that, in turn, support individual well-being, such as in the areas of nutrition and emotional learning.
He is very involved in the elementary school his son attends by re-imagining schools as community hubs and creating a piano curriculum that is accessible to every student and teacher school-wide.
Felix also serves as Music Minister at St. Paul's Episcopal, where he creates a supportive environment that encourages both musical and personal growth of those in the ministry.
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Felix holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano collaboration from the University of California - Santa Barbara, where he studied piano with Robert Koenig and Paul Berkowitz, vocal coaching with John Ballerino, and theory with Lee Rothfarb, a Master of Music and Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of Southern California, where he studied piano with Bernadene Blaha and Kevin Fitz-Gerald, harpischord with Lucinda Carver, and pedagogy with Dennis Thurmond, and pursued independent studies in improvisation with Helmut Lörscher at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany.
Felix' involvement in education is equally long and storied. At VC, he teaches piano class and piano instruction. At USC, he taught Class Piano and Private Piano. At UCSB, he worked as a coach and accompanist. At CWI, he taught Music Appreciation. He started as a teacher’s assistant at the German-American School of Palo Alto, teaching at their Saturday and Summer programs for twenty years. In addition to teaching German, he has translated for De Haske Music Publishing and Gold Circle Films.
All pictures on this site were taken by Felix himself.