Conservatory Without Walls Founder Living A Life In Harmony

Inside his Moorestown studio, while sitting beside his beloved Steinway piano, Anthony “Tony” Casario, 79, founder of the Conservatory Without Walls, is a man of great approachability and enchants visitors with stories of his long legacy with music.

Growing up in North Philadelphia, Tony’s passion for music manifested with the encouragement of his mother, and he learned to play piano while in elementary school. As a teen, he auditioned for Leo Ornstein, a Russian-born prodigy.

Ornstein had immigrated to the United States at the age of 13 and attained international fame as a virtuoso pianist. At the age of 103, Ornstein was profiled in the 1995 documentary Do Not Go Gently, narrated by Walter Cronkite, which highlighted the incredible creativity of aging artists.

Accepted by Ornstein as his protégé at the age of 15, Tony studied with him for six years with hopes of becoming a concert performer.

“Until one day, he just disappeared,” Tony says of the master composer, who dropped out of the public stage and stopped teaching for nearly a decade to concentrate on composing.

Fraught with uncertainty on whether he could make a living in the arts, Tony enrolled in Temple University a couple years later and began studying psychology—until one pivotal day, when he was riding the subway to school.

“A young man walked into my car with a radio playing Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto,” Tony remembers. “The seduction of the music led me right back to what I cherished.”

Tony left Temple, and shortly thereafter, he began teaching music at Haddonfield’s Conservatory of Musical Arts and Combs College of Music in Philadelphia. For a time, he was the head of the piano department at Rutgers University.

During these years, Tony met his second love, his wife of 30 years, Denise Casario, 55.

When she was 14, Denise started taking piano lessons with Tony. She continued studying with him at Rutgers, and then later transferred to Rowan University as a performance major.

Denise has also taught music lessons at the Conservatory of Musical Arts and at Perkins Center for Arts. She’s been a rehearsal pianist for the Moorestown Theater Company and for the Core Academy of Movement in Mount Laurel.

It was while he was living in Haddonfield that Tony set the stage to start the Conservatory Without Walls in 1976, in which music instructors teach students in the comfort of students' homes.

“At the time there really wasn’t anything like it,” says Denise.

After the couple married, they moved to Moorestown, expanding their teaching-at-home concept.

According to Tony, everyone should be given the opportunity to realize their potential in music.

To make good on that vow, the Casarios insist on hiring musical instructors—these days they have 20—who are flexible and versatile, and who can concentrate on a student’s strengths.

“Art is not a concentrated subject like science,” says Tony. “There is no set formula for learning.”

Besides piano, their instructors are adept at cello, drums, guitar, saxophone and voice, to name a few.

Hailing from prestigious schools such as The Juilliard School, Berklee College of Music, Eastman School of Music and Temple University Esther Boyd College of Music, Tony says he tries to match the right teacher with each student.

He estimates they’ve taught thousands of children over the years.

And kids are a subject the Casarios know all too well.

The couple’s five children—Stephanie Tait, 29; Talia Custer, 26; Amanda, 24; Gabriel, 21; and Brianna, 13—are all gifted musicians, having learned piano from their parents. Son Gabriel is also a talented guitarist and Brianna studies voice and has performed in local theater.

Pictures of Stephanie and Talia, who were also violinists with the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra, adorn the studio’s walls next to posters—some autographed— of great composers such as Vladimir Horowitz, William Kappell and Marcel Farago.

Talia and Amanda are also teachers in the Moorestown Public School District.

These days, Tony still handles the business operations but has retired from teaching, except for his daughter Brianna. Denise still does instructions for a handful of students.

But the real joy lies in being newly ordained grandparents to Stephanie’s one-year-old son Brody and Talia’s 4-month-old boy Wyatt.

“Besides music, the best thing that ever happened to me was marrying Denise and having children,” says Tony. “Family is the most important thing.”