Musical Living Academy

Our mission is to facilitate the gift of music-making to every individual life that is part of Musical Living Academy. The beauty of music is the ability to reflect who we are or long for. Some enjoy the structure and challenge that traditional classical study offers. Some want to learn a more practical approach as to use music for a worship experience or playing in a band, and some would love to do everything and anything having to do with music. One thing I know: we can help!

Edelir Garza

Looking back at where it all started, it seems like I was taken by the hand and led down a path of great fulfillment and passion. I first fell in love with making music as I learned to play the piano. I later fell in love with how I was able to teach others to the make music. I have currently fallen in love with the opportunity to encourage younger teachers through my experiences and learned lessons.

My musical journey began at age eight. I remember listening to songs and their was this one sound that would stand out above all. It wasn’t until my father helped me pinpoint what it was that I discovered it was the piano. Soon after I ran across an ad in the newspaper for piano lessons and I asked dad if he could sign me up. Of course, I had not idea the kind of request this was for a single-incomed family of five. Nonetheless, dad took me to sign up for piano lessons and making music quickly became my passion, joy & refuge.

I was very fortunate to start my piano lesson journey with an amazing piano teacher, Dr. Abraham Choy, that took my curiosity for piano and turned it into a polished skill. He challenged me and gave me training that later on I would find out was even college level music training, and he did all this from age 9 – 16. It was when I turned 16 that my beloved piano teacher died in his sleep…I wish he could of know what all those years of lessons produced in my life. I found myself lost for a bit since there were not many private piano instructors that would take advanced piano students. Thankfully, it was only about 3 months later that Iby Kovacs would arrive in McAllen and pick up where Dr. Choy left off. Iby had dedicated her entire life to the study of music as she attended and graduated from the Franz Lizst Conservatory in Budapest, Hungary. It was Iby that saw the potential in me to teach others to play the piano. I was too shy to say no and so I started my first piano student when I was 17 years old.

One student quickly turned to ten. By the end of my first year teaching private piano lessons, my studio had grown to over 30 students. I never had the chance to work at the places where my high school peers were getting jobs. In fact, my students kept referring me until I reached a maximum of 50 students per week and so my entire work resume is really a career resume of many hours of experience in teaching. I became passionate about the art of teaching and I attended trainings and conferences to better this art. By the time I graduated high school I knew exactly what degree I would choose: music education. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Texas Pan American in the Spring of 2005 and throughout all these years I maintained a private piano studio of 50 students per month.

After several years of dreaming, planning, and preparing, God provided the opportunity of expanding my vision and establishing Musical Living Academy in August of 2011. Musical Living Academy represents my passion, a new challenge, but most of all the potential to teach others the AMAZING possibility we have to improve lives through music instruction. My life was changed through music instruction and I believe I have already changed several lives the same way. The team of teachers that is being built at MLA are here not because we can teach, but because we believe we have been called to change lives through our gift of teaching. We don’t teach because we love music, we teach because we love people and music can change your life for the better.