About Kasia

Kasia believes music study is a humble exploration that helps the student to realize their whole self. 
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​Kasia Paciorkowska has taught music for twenty-three years. A perpetual student herself, she employs a variety of methods, including Dalcroze, Kodaly, Orff, Gordon, Music Together, and Suzuki to create a learning experience suited to the needs of each individual student. 

She has enjoyed a broad spectrum career in music education and performance, holding positions as Associate Conductor/Accompanist of the Grammy Award winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Principal Flute of the Silesian Orchestra, and as Collaborative Pianist at Christopher Newport University. Most recently, prior to moving to Highlands Ranch, Colorado, she maintained an in demand teaching schedule in New Orleans where she served as Music Director at the Waldorf School of New Orleans, leading the orchestra, choir, pentatonic flute, and ukulele ensembles, while also maintaining an active music lesson studio from her home.

As a child, Kasia was selected for the rare opportunity to complete her primary and secondary education at a full-time music conservatory. She began music studies at Poland’s elite Stanislaw Moniuszko as a piano major at the age of seven. After graduating with a Music Diploma in Performance from Moniuszko, Kasia then earned a Master’s Degree in Music Education and Conducting from Silesian University in Poland. She holds a second Master’s Degree in Flute Performance from the Lynn Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton, Florida, where she studied with an all-star faculty flown in weekly from the top orchestras of the United States.

Other career highlights include serving as Music Program Director for Invest Collegiate Imagine Charter School, Music Director for Swannanoa United Methodist Church, Piano Faculty for Academy for the Arts of Asheville, and Collaborative Pianist at Mars Hill University, all in Asheville, NC. She served as Choir and Orchestra Director for one of the first El Sistema programs in the United States, Soundscapes, and she performed second flute alongside New York Philharmonic Flutist Renee Siebert in the Las Vegas Music Festival Orchestra. Soundscapes of Hampton Roads, Virginia, is a revolutionary program that teaches transformational life-skills through the vehicle of music. During Kasia’s time with Soundscapes, she worked in a school community with a child poverty demographic of 82%. She witnessed the power of music as her 80 member choir and orchestra went from struggling to behave on stage during their initial concert programs to performing Beethoven arrangements in harmony together a couple years later. The program documented significant improvement in test scores among program participants vs. their classmates not enrolled in the program.

While teaching piano, flute, choir, and Music and Movement at the Pittsburgh Music Academy, Kasia had the opportunity to study the methods and philosophies of Dr. Shinichi Suzuki with Kiki Barley, a pioneer Suzuki clinician. In 2008, Kasia certified as a Suzuki Instructor through the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Suzuki emphasizes that all children can cultivate and nurture talent with the correct environment. The method gives deep meaning to the study of music as it helps students to discover awareness of intuition through the experience of creativity, discipline, and beauty, all to nurture the goodness within each student. 

In her free time Kasia enjoys being with her family, painting, reading about holistic living, and exploring musical instruments. She happily skis often now that she lives in Colorado! She’s the Music Columnist as well as Wellness Columnist for Glos Polonia, a Polish newspaper based in Denver with readership in Polish communities across the United States. Fun facts: Kasia's best friends in school went on to become huge pop stars in Poland, the Golec uOrkiestra. Her A-list connections don't stop in Poland. When Kasia was on faculty at Pinecrest Elementary, she taught young Ariana Grande a private piano lesson.