Big news: We're expanding across America with support from some incredible people

We have some news that is music to our ears, and we hope it is to yours too. We're partnering with music legend Hans Zimmer, welcoming Hadi Partovi from Code.org as our new CEO, and received support from some incredible tech visionaries to open more piano schools across the country. Together, we're on a mission to transform how students learn piano. 

"We're building a movement that challenges the traditional model of music education. We teach music just like you’d learn any new language: you speak before you read. Our methodology creates an environment where learning feels like play, and success is a natural result of students falling in love with piano. Our vision is to bring this new approach to millions of students and change the way piano is taught worldwide."

That's what I shared with the press this week. But here, I want to talk about what this news really means to me.

We're partnering with the legendary Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer and his studio Bleeding Fingers Music. Hadi Partovi, the founder of Code.org, is joining us as our new CEO. And we've raised funding from a remarkable group of investors who believe in what we're building including: entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), Michelle Zatlyn (Co-founder, President & Co-Chair of Cloudflare), and Drew Houston (CEO of Dropbox).

With their support, we can finally do something I've dreamt about for years: bringing Payam Music to students across the country.

How Payam Music started

For me, piano started as a way to escape into something beautiful. I began composing at age 9, and that's when piano stopped being just an instrument and became my best friend. No matter what life threw at me, I could turn to it and just let my emotions loose.

When I began building the Payam Music methodology while in graduate school over a decade ago, my main goal was to provide every student with the same relationship to music as I had… not through years of struggling with sheet music, but through an intuitive approach that lets them play the songs they love from day one. Our instruction, which happens in weekly, private, personalized 1:1 lessons in our piano schools, is about the relationship between a teacher and a student as much as it is about making progress. Our approach, inspired by the psychology of language acquisition, was even featured on 60 Minutes.

I will be the first to admit that the approach was met with skepticism at first over a decade ago. Most piano teachers stick to what's worked for hundreds of years, and a new methodology is a hard sell. But over time, our students' results have spoken for themselves. 96% of our students reach diploma-level within four years. Nationally, only 2% of students get there in 12 years. And in the 2025 PTA Reflections competition, our students took four of the top five spots in Washington state and the #1 spot in the entire country.

To be clear, the wins aren't the point. The point is the love of music that drives those wins. But it does help when the results back up what we've been saying for over a decade.

Why these amazing partners said yes

Hadi Partovi's son has been a Payam Music student since 2020. He won 3rd place nationally in the PTA Reflections competition for piano composition last year. As a parent, Hadi saw firsthand what this kind of education can do for a child. And as the founder of Code.org, where he scaled computer science education to 100 million students globally, he knows what it takes to build something nationwide. Code.org took the complicated language of coding and made it accessible, simple, fun, and engaging for millions of students, allowing them to develop a strong passion. Payam Music has the same mission, but towards the complicated language of music. To have Hadi leading us as CEO is something I'm deeply grateful for.

Here's how Hadi puts it:

"Everybody loves music, but most people never learn to play an instrument. Payam Music enables any student to learn to play the music they love. And with the support of the investors and musicians we're announcing today, we want to give every student the opportunity to develop their creativity through music."

Hadi has also been thinking a lot about what kids need in the age of AI: "Building creativity, confidence, and grit are the critical skills that every parent and future employer wants to see." I couldn't agree more. Music is one of the most powerful ways to develop all three.

Mark Cuban put it more directly:

"Too many kids give up on music because traditional methods don't work for them. Payam Music has cracked the code with a teaching approach that keeps kids engaged and actually learning."

And then there's Hans Zimmer. Working with Hans Zimmer still feels a little surreal to write. Through our new partnership with Bleeding Fingers — the multiple Emmy Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated composer collective co-founded by Hans Zimmer, Russell Emanuel, and Steve Kofsky — our top students will be mentored by some of the world's leading composers. For young composers, this is the kind of opportunity I never had as a kid, and didn't even dare to imagine.

Here's what Hans Zimmer shared:

"Music education has long been stuck in the past, with methods that often fail to capture the imagination of young learners. Payam Music is rewriting the playbook for how music is taught. With an intuitive methodology and the support of passionate teachers, Payam Music is enabling students to reach their full potential — and have fun composing music. I'm thrilled that my production studio Bleeding Fingers Music will be mentoring their best students to nurture the next generation of composers."

What this means for our students

If you're already part of the Payam Music family, nothing about your child's lessons changes. The teachers you know, the curriculum you trust, the school you walk into each week… all of that stays exactly the same. What changes is what we're now able to build around it: more locations, deeper composition mentorship for students who want it, and a much bigger community of young pianists across the country.

If you're not part of our community yet, this is the easiest time to start. We're expanding beyond our current locations in Washington, California, New York, and Maryland to schools across the country where we teach weekly, personalized, private 1:1 piano lessons. We're also extending our reach through live 1:1 online lessons so families anywhere in the US can experience what we do. International students, we know you’re interested too and are working on it!

Sign up for a free trial lesson, add your name to a waitlist, or request a school in your neighborhood.

I started Payam Music because I wanted kids to love piano the way I do. With this team and these partners behind us, we get to share that with a lot more of them.

This next chapter represents more than just recognition for Payam Music. It's validation for every educator who believes in doing things differently, every student who's discovered their voice through our schools, and every family who took a chance at a new piano school.