Women in Business Profile:
Beverly Milder

St. Louis Jewish Light, July 1, 2009

When you can say you've spent at least half your life doing what you love – It's a wonderful life!

Beverly Milder — musician and music educator turned businesswoman — has owned and operated a successful Music School for 30 years and enjoyed every minute of it.  After having offered music education to thousands of students, she believes there's no other career she would have chosen.

“I truly love my job,” Milder said with great enthusiasm. “I get to see 100 students a day.  And when they start at a young age with us, I'm allowed the privilege of watching them blossom and grow.”

Now in its 30th year, Beverly Milder's Musical Arts, located in Chesterfield, is dedicated to providing a nurturing community for new and experienced musicians of all ages. Milder's school boasts an enrollment of nearly 700 students weekly and is one of the largest Harmony Road Music Schools (a derivative of the Yamaha Music Program) in the country. She attributes her educationally oriented music school's success to the top-notch education her teachers provide.

“It's a team atmosphere, with teachers sharing ideas and promoting the best ways of learning music,” she said.  “I hire only full-time, university-degreed music teachers who are also education specialists. The transition from group to private lessons, usually after two or three years, is smooth and seamless because our instructors are so fully in tune with our program.”

Milder's teachers are trained for two months before beginning to teach.  Because most faculty are trained in voice and piano, students are also offered a combination of both in one lesson. The school also offers private piano, voice, guitar and violin lessons. Students are often allowed their choice of teacher, which Milder believes creates a comfortable fit where personality and learning style are concerned.

Staffing coordination enables parents to schedule private lessons for two or more family members simultaneously, a relief for many families who may otherwise spend hours carpooling after school. In addition, the school's size offers Milder the ability to group students more closely by age.

“We've created a wonderful community here,” Milder said.  “About half the staff has been here for more than 10 years, and former-students-turned parents now are bringing their children to the school.  Imagine how thrilling that is!”

Before starting Beverly Milder's Musical Arts, Milder taught vocal music in an elementary school in the Parkway district, piano and pre-school music classes and performed. She received a master's degree in music education from Washington University in St. Louis with an emphasis in piano and voice and has a lifetime certificate in teaching music in public schools K-12. While living in Houston as a young married woman, she had the opportunity to observe a Yamaha music school class for younger children.

“It was then that I realized this parent/child curriculum was what I wanted to teach,” she said. “I saw children learning in a group and sharing music. Their teacher was playing the piano and singing while students played on a keyboard. Everyone appeared to be having fun!”

This joyful method of music education, as Milder refers to it, prompted her to train with the program after moving to Gainesville, Fla. She eventually assumed the director's position, working for the owner for three and a half years. Then, after a move to St. Louis, she began teaching the program from her home in Green Trails in 1978. One year later, she opened Beverly Milder's Musical Arts down the road from where she was living.

Milder said she worked part-time in the beginning, creating a teaching schedule that worked for her. A next door neighbor sat with her children, Rebecca and Rachel, when they were pre-school age, and her third, Jacob, was born in 1980. The older her children grew, the more she worked and the bigger the school became, she said.  By the time her children were in high school and college, Milder was working full time. The size of her school grew proportionally with the enrollment as she rented more space and created larger classrooms, as well as rooms for private education.

Milder looks back fondly on the early days of her school, remembering bringing her children - a son and two daughters now with families of their own - to work and enrolling them in lessons.  “It was a wonderful atmosphere to grow up in,” she said. “At home, we sang around the piano at night.” Not many can boast such a family-healthy way to bring work home with them. Milder also believes her running a business served as a role model for her children, who respected her as they grew older for turning a music teaching career into a thriving business.  Although she misses teaching in the classroom, she says she really enjoys the business aspect of her music school.

“Oh, I still teach,” she explained. “I'm quality control, observing and discussing.  I teach the teachers.”  Milder has also served as a traveling consultant for the Yamaha Music School Program to help with both the music education and business aspects of other schools. She is certified to train teachers in the Harmony Road Curriculum.  She has also served as a cantorial soloist for the past 12 years at Covenant/CHAI Apartments.