Mozart's Gym

A Brookfield Music School Where Kids Write Their Own Songs — and Sing Along to Elvis in the Living Room

Mozart's Gym isn't a single teacher operating out of a spare room — it's a full music school tucked into Brookfield Village, next door to Vino Cappuccino, with a recording studio, a piano lab, several private studios, and a lobby comfortable enough that waiting parents don't dread the hour. The school was built around a specific idea: that music education should produce complete musicians, not just kids who can fumble through a recital piece. That means combining private lessons with group workshops, building fluency in both classical and popular repertoire, and — unusually for a suburban music school — teaching recording technology alongside voice, strings, and piano.

The faculty reflects that breadth. Director Aeron Ogden holds a B.A. in Music from Grace College and completed graduate work in Music Composition and Technology at UWM, bringing 18 years of private teaching experience to his piano, theory, and composition students. Voice instructor Kristin Knutson trained at two of the country's most selective conservatories — a B.M. in Vocal Performance from the Juilliard School, followed by graduate study in Musical Theatre at the Manhattan School of Music — and has performed professionally in New York, Milwaukee, and on cruise ships. Strings instructor Jaime Dringenburg combines a Music Education degree from Wartburg College with graduate studies at Towson University and years of classroom and private teaching. Recording technology instructor Matthew Tucker holds a dual degree in Recording Arts and Music Business from Full Sail University and works as a freelance engineer in TV, film, advertising, and live events. Rounding out the piano faculty are Robin Carnitz, a working accompanist with Milwaukee-area organizations, and Luke Edgewood, who has performed at Piano Blu, 88 Keys, and BLU at The Pfister Hotel.

Students range from four-year-olds taking their first lessons to adults pursuing pop and rock piano with Edgewood. The school structures its piano program by age and goal: beginners in K4 through fifth grade work with Ogden or Carnitz, older students can enter a conservatory track through high school, and sixth graders on up can pursue pop and rock keyboarding. Violin, viola, and cello lessons are open from age five through adult; voice from age seven. Theory, composition, and recording technology are reserved for more advanced students in middle school and above — a sequencing that reflects the school's emphasis on building genuine foundations before layering on complexity.

What shows up repeatedly in parent reviews is something harder to engineer than a good curriculum: the sense that instructors actually know each individual student. One parent from Milwaukee noted that her daughter's teacher took the time 'to get to know her' and let the student put 'a little Braydon into the song' — a small detail that points to a teaching approach that leaves room for personal expression rather than drilling students through a fixed repertoire. Another parent from Menomonee Falls described trying multiple piano teachers before finding Aeron Ogden, noting that her two children — with 'very different personalities' — were both successfully motivated, and that they 'no longer mind practicing.' That's a specific outcome, and it tracks with what a Wauwatosa parent described after a family gathering turned into an impromptu sing-along when her son sat down at the piano and played 'Can't Help Falling in Love.'

The school also hosts quarterly student workshops that serve a social and musical function — bringing students together to collaborate, perform, and hear each other's work. A review from Scott and Mary Ann B. in Wauwatosa described watching students not just perform but collaborate on original music, calling out 'the musical collaboration that you foster among your students' as 'extremely impressive.' It's the kind of outcome that tends to happen when a school treats composition and performance as connected practices rather than separate tracks. Mozart's Gym accepts students of most ages and skill levels, distributes Hal Leonard books directly to simplify the curriculum side of things, and covers a genre range — classical, jazz, rock, opera, pop, musical theatre, sacred music — wide enough that students aren't locked into a single tradition.

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