Lora Dimitrova - Teaching

Lora first started teaching the piano at the "Pancho Vladigerov" State Music Academy in Sofia where she was studying herself under Julia and Konstantin Ganevi and was appointed as their assistant. She taught both the undergraduate and post-graduate classes.

Since moving to the UK, she has taught and given masterclasses at various schools and colleges including Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Blackheath Music Conservatoire, Menuhin School, Purcell School, Chetham's School, Wells Cathedral School, King's School (Canterbury) and Bromley Youth Music Trust (where she was head of keyboard studies from 2009 to 2023). She has taught master classes in France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland as well as in the UK.

Lora has also given lectures in music and performance at Belfast and Andover Universities and she created a Performance and Interpretation course for BMus and MMus students in Canterbury Christ Church University which she taught for 11 years.

In 2000, Lora created the Sospiro Piano Centre, a small piano school in South East London which she ran and taught in until 2013. This had a staff of 6 and around 100 students.

Today, Lora teaches privately, specialising in advanced students from Europe's music colleges and conservatoires, helping to prepare them for concerts, auditions, exams and career-changing interviews. This includes intensive half and full day blocks of one-to-one teaching. If you would like to explore possible lessons with Lora, please get in touch.

Lora continues to lead popular master-class style sessions for groups of advanced piansts (Advanced Piano Maestros, APM). These sessions take place every 2 weeks in All Saints Church, Orpington, using their beautiful Steinway Grand piano. If you're an adult or student pianist of concert level standard and would like to join one of the groups, please get in touch. See APM Classes for further details and a video.

Many adults who are themselves piano teachers keep coming back to Lora for lessons and the inspiration she provides. Below are a few of Lora's piano students and the varied musical professions she has helped inspire.

Lora has taught Jane for many years and she is now making a career as a classical concert pianist. She is pictured here performing Mozart's Piano Concerto K488 with the London Mozart Players to a full house at Egerton Music festival.

Lora taught Oliver the piano as a child, including performing the Lutoslavski variations on a theme of Paganini for 2 pianos with him in a memorable concert in Dover. Oliver is now one of the most charismatic concert pianists of his generation as well as a composer and artist with EMMA for Peace, which works with United Nations partner organisations to promote music as a tool for diplomacy.

Lora taught Dobrinka the piano as a child and she has gone on to be a multi-award winning composer, named as one of the 7 female composers changing the face of music (London Standard) and whose work was performed in St Paul's Cathedral for the Queen's Golden Jubilee. She was chair of the jury for the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.

Lora taught Leah the piano up to and during her university education. She is now Dr Leah Broad - an award-winning music writer, historian, and public speaker, specialising in the twentieth-century and women in music. Her first book, Quartet, is a group biography of four women composers: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen.

Lora has taught and inspired Jena since he was 13 years old. Jena followed a dual career in law (becoming partner in law firm Lindops) and music (playing and teaching piano and violin) but has now dedicated his life to his first love - music. As well as teaching he adjudicates music competitions and is trustee of the Southend Festival of Performing Arts.