Novu Jazz Academy Arvostelua 27

I’ve played piano most of my life in country and rock bands, and even spent some time as a music major, but jazz was still something I hadn’t fully figured out. Working with Charlie changed that for me.

Charlie has a way of bringing you back to what really matters. Like a great coach, he helped me get back to the fundamentals and showed me how to build a true jazz sound. He also helped me recognize and break some bad habits I didn’t even realize were holding me back.

Our time together has been both enjoyable and incredibly worthwhile. I always walked away feeling like I had made real progress and knew exactly what to work on next.

I’m very grateful for Charlie’s guidance, and I’d recommend him to anyone who wants to grow as a jazz pianist.

If you’re serious about improving, Charlie is the real deal. Daniel Buffington

I’m a professional Film Music Composer, a “self-defense” piano player. I studied at Berklee College of Music many years ago...
Charlie has a unique combination of being a very refined musician and a fantastic teacher.
To find those attributes together is extremely rare.

I went through many teachers in the diverse disciplines I approached in my career.
Jazz piano was the newest adventure.

Charlie has been absolutely inspiring.
His method makes absolute sense.
He’s very patient, extremely organized and above all very generous.

Whatever your level, I highly recommend him!

Professional commitments make me pause the classes for a while.
I’ll be back!

121 coaching with Charlie is really helpful. He is really good in tackling your difficulties in playing and to reduce that in smallest units which are easier to solve. Also, the academy videos are very helpful and can provide a lot of answers to your questions about playing and chord voicings. overall it was an excellent experience and I hope I'll be able to repeat that one day.

I'm a full-time choir director, educator, arranger, composer, author, bandleader and general musician. I live in London, UK. I'm 55 years old, and I've been playing the piano since I was 7. I'm really comfortable with improvising, playing with chords etc, but I've been playing "pseudo-jazz" for most of my life. I was comfortable with 9ths, 13ths etc, and a degree of soloing. People who didn't understand jazz would think I was great, but jazzers would recognise instantly that I wasn't really comfortable in the genre. I've had various jazz lessons over the years, but I could never seem to make the leap to understanding what I was missing. Recently I was feeling that needed to get out of this rut. I was browsing TikTok, as I'm young-at-heart, and one of Charlie's lessons popped up. I watched it and was instantly hooked, as it explained some concepts which I'd struggled with. I watched all his social media videos and decided to book some lessons at the end of 2025.

I can honestly say that the first lesson alone was worth the price of the full course! It bridged that missing link and I started to be able to understand how to progress in my playing. Charlie is a FANTASTIC teacher, patient, knowledgeable, approachable and very clear about his method. As a qualified and experienced educator myself, I really appreciated his flexible yet methodical approach to teaching. We videoed all the Zoom sessions, so I now have 10 brilliant bespoke resources to refer back to whenever I need to.

Also, his NOVU jazz academy is a brilliant resource - SO many lessons on everything you need to improve.

If you're in a rut with your playing, if you keep going back to Blues scale for everything, if you know that you're not sounding how you want to sound, but you don't know how to move on - Charlie is your man. There are many online resources with great players showing you how to play great licks, but this is so much more. It's a great player WHO IS ALSO A GREAT TEACHER, showing you a structured way to move forward in your playing. Don't look anywhere else - this is the next step to take!

So nice to have Charlie listen and take me to a next level in my jazz soloing . After our sessions - I have a clear direction and guidance to continue to make my lines smoother and phrasing to flow logically and effectively to reach the next level . For anyone seeking highest level private listening coaching and feedback - Charlie is your man ! The school is top tier.

Charlie does a very good job of teaching you the fundamentals of jazz playing. As someone who is very logical, his spread hand voicing systems and emphasis on rhythmic transformed my ability to play jazz piano. It also set me up to teach myself how to learn additional content on my own. Highly recommend!

I went through Charlie's 10-week coaching package, which includes the Novu Jazz Academy course videos. I entered into the course as a classically-trained pianist with little jazz experience. I left knowing methods to structure chord voicings, how to work on the getting a better jazz sound/feel, and with a clearer insight on how to walk down the jazz piano path. I had a great experience, but wish I had waited until a period of time that I had more time to spend practicing.

At the time of this review, the course included Jazz Piano Prep 1 & 2; Spread Voicings 1, 2A, 2B, & 2C (spread voicings is Charlie's term for chords voiced in both hands while playing the melody as the highest note). The course continues to update as Charlie finishes his videos. There's an online community section for students to post, and Charlie provides helpful responses to each comment. I found the course videos to have a clear and modern aesthetic, and supplemental PDFs were easy to read and informative. The Thinkific course platform was easy to navigate.

During coaching sessions, Charlie tracked everything we covered in an organized shared Google Doc, and he answered my questions thoroughly. Video calls had the same clean aesthetic as his course videos, and he was generous with making up any time that was lost from starting late, even staying late on some days when he wanted to explain further about a topic. He was great in catering each week's lesson to my specific needs. Charlie came to each lesson with positive energy and a genuine desire to help me along my educational journey.

I got in touch with Charlie through IG and then we ended up scheduling a Zoom call to talk about my goals and pricing for the coaching package. The value of the coaching is truly up to how much time you can spend honing your jazz craft. Charlie is responsive through WhatsApp for any questions and customized videos, so you can easily get the package's worth by practicing and communicating your struggles often (which I wish I had done more). If I could redo my experience, I would have chosen to purchase the video course first before doing the coaching at a more ideal season of my life.

Charlie’s lessons are very helpful and detailed. I learned how to improvise from him, and I really appreciate how hardworking and responsible he was while I was studying with him. Even when I was traveling in Korea, he still replied to my messages quickly and answered my questions very often! The intensive training during summer break with Charlie prepared me to audition for my university’s jazz club.

I get to learn everything from the basics to the most advanced in such a short time using the academy

If you are self taught jazz pianist looking to step their game up look 👏🏽 no 👏🏽 further 👏🏽.

As someone who began their piano journey in my 30’s I can say that I’ve made more progress in the 10 weeks I’ve spent studying with Charlie than I did in the 2 years I spent scouring the internet and youtube for lessons.

The system works. Having my own personal lesson plan, along with Charlies guidance AND the tutorials in Novu as a resource in between lessons I was able to hone in on specific areas of my playing and catapulted my progress.

Charlie is a great teacher and a master of his craft. And I wish I would’ve started sooner.

Charlie has a wealth of knowledge on how to best teach students of all skill levels in jazz. Not to mention he's also a great classical player and everything in between. I remember leaving every lesson feeling like wow I now have the tools to take my playing to the next level. It becomes only a matter of trusting the process and putting in that work everyday to actually get it done, but Charlie will help you every step of the way and it will be fun. I myself am a piano teacher, and had been trying lessons out with lots of other teachers before I tried both his 1 on 1 coaching and academy and no program or teacher really competes with his results. If you're ready to grind and put in the work he's the teacher you want.

I'm a gigging pianist who had reached an impasse in my jazz development before meeting Charlie. Charlie changed all that.

Over the years I had worked with several local jazz mentors, with limited results. I now needed to find someone who understood my plight and could really help me move forward.

Enter Charlie - a consummate professional educator and a superb jazz pianist. Charlie really helped me break down my barriers using his tried-and-true jazz method.

Access to the Novu Academy was the icing. It provided me with terrific tools and tutorials to get me working at my own pace between lessons. Invaluable.

Taken together, I was able to chart a truly results-oriented path towards developing my own jazz voice. Thank you Charlie !

Highly Recommended.

My experience with Novu Jazz Academy has been excellent. As a member of Charlie Tran’s academy I have no shortage of quality information organized from the beginner level to advanced. Charlie’s online courses [with accompanying video] are systematized in a way that is easily manageable and always available to repeat until you have it and wish to move on. For me - the real magic came into focus after I scheduled ten private coaching sessions with Charlie Tran over a ten week timeframe. From my first coaching session it was easy to understand I was with a practiced professional jazz coach in every way. The foundation that Novu Jazz Academy has put in-place for me and or further strengthened cannot be overlooked. As a novice I was learning to read and play a few popular jazz standards for the first time. I’m guessing if you have struggled, not enjoyed or are burned out with piano because you’re lacking the recipe to have fun playing music - consider joining Novu Jazz Academy which I’m sure will open up a whole new world for you.

I had an amazing 10 weeks with Charlie. I’ve been playing piano on and off for the last 12 years and was always interested in jazz but never knew where to start. Having all the resources on YouTube and internet felt like the right thing to rely on however it only hindered my progress. Charlie was able break down and explain concepts of jazz (especially at the beginner level) so that it was palatable and easy to digest.

Charlie is a great guy and made the 10 weeks of our lessons together extremely informative and enjoyable. We were able to tackle a handful of standards and the concept of improv/soloing. Charlie was also great at tailoring lessons to your goals.

His academy has great resources and it’s clear that he’s put some time and effort into the courses. I would highly recommend novu academy and Charlie’s lessons for anyone who’s looking to start playing jazz - but also for people that are ready to put the work in.

Charlie gives you what you need, to play at the level you want, no more and no less. Simpler art for your own evening enjoyment? Yes, he helps tremendously to get you there. College-level depth? Also yes, but of course be ready to work harder.

He's clearly been through the gauntlet of a full college music degree. For persons like me, who love jazz piano but have no intent of becoming collegiate or professional, most of the hardship is identifying what's necessary vs. what's not. Charlie has gone the extra mile to filter all of that for me so that I can just focus in on practicing. All training materials are very well organized also.

All in all, very high quality.

Great one on one tutorials with Charlie. Excellent delivery and always willing to help outside lessons hours with customised videos. Charlie is a very serious and consistent with his work. if you really want to improve your Jazz piano skills I highly recommend Charlie and his Novu Jazz Academy for you

Charlie is a great coach/teacher! He has a wonderful gift for breaking down complex concepts and making them practical with immediate application. In my jazz sessions, Charlie was always supportive and inspiring.

Additionally, the NOVU Jazz Academy is an amazing treasure chest of resources, available anytime! The layout is clear, and easy to access. Thank you!

Charlie provides excellent individualized lessons that deconstruct and demystify jazz into the technical and theory components. Anyone can start but I think it helps if you have a decent background in music theory and piano technique. It was a great framework for my own self study and practice.

Charlie has such a warm and welcoming personality, super easy to get along with.

Each lesson he’s been extremely present and able to meet me where I’m at. His voicing system is so essential to learning the foundations of jazz piano, I can’t believe major institutions aren’t using it (and all credit due to him for creating it)

His overall teaching is so digestible, everything is clear and makes sense. He’s also been very flexible with time, which makes learning with him easy and accessible.

If you’re looking to truly understand jazz piano and really feel it instead of just play it. Charlie’s Novu Jazz Academy is the place to be. I can’t recommend him highly enough!

During consolation showed me how attentive and professional he was but also was super welcoming. I felt like he was the right person to invest my time and energy into to finally peruse what I want to do. Learning from him was a lot more than just wanting to learn jazz piano, but wanting to be supported and understood through the process.

He is a very organized teacher that has the ability to teach in ways that are easy to comprehend. He has so much to offer every single session. His methods and strategies are unique and I have to say it was so helpful. I really enjoyed learning about the fundamentals of jazz and spread voicing.
I highly recommend this teacher and I am greatly appreciative of his help in all aspects.