2011 → today
In 2011, Maya Castillo was teaching piano to three neighborhood kids out of her living room on Ponce de Leon Blvd. She had one upright piano, a folding chair, and a strict policy: no song is too uncool to learn if it gets you to practice. Her husband Jonas, a guitarist, started taking overflow students in the evenings. By the following spring, they had a waiting list.
They signed a lease for a small space half a block away, built a second practice room themselves over a long weekend, and opened what would become Treehouse Music School. They named it after the fort-like feeling of those first lessons in the living room — a private, concentrated world where the only thing that mattered was the music in front of you.
Today the school has four full-time instructors, two dedicated studio rooms, and a small recital hall in the back. The waiting list is still real, but so is the patience. Maya and Jonas still teach. They also still argue about whether the recital playlist needs more Bowie. (It does.)
