Soli Music | About Us

About Us

Our family music business began in 1971. Stan Contois worked at IBM and repaired player pianos on the side and decided to open up a retail music shop, Contois Piano & Organ with his wife Judy. Conn organs were the main focus for many years and Stan and Judy traveled the world having achieved many top sales awards for their region. In 1982, after attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Dave Contois began working at the shop and acquired the Yamaha Music Product franchise in 1983. Our name was changed to Contois Music, LLC.

1983 was the year MIDI and the DX7 were introduced, so it was a pretty exciting time to venture into the music retail business. The retail business evolved into a major ecommerce business from 1996-2007 becoming one of the top 10 Yamaha e-retailers in the country. During all these years Dave's passion has been integrating technology into music education. Dave was one of the first to create background tracks for piano method books back in 1989 using the John Thompson Piano Course along with the Yamaha Clavinova Digital Pianos and Portable Keyboards. Technology still used to this day in exclusively in Yamaha keyboards.

In 2010 the business decided to focus more on music education. Using our knowledge of music and technology to provide music education to our local K-12 and Adult students while continuing our Yamaha retail business. Our name was changed to The Contois School of Music. The Contois School of Music Band was also formed to integrate live performance into our programs so our students could collaborate with local professional musicians. The band performed frequently around our region at very high-profile events.

In June of 2017 we decided to discontinue our retail business and focus all of our efforts on music education. The Contois School of Music educated hundreds of students each week. Piano, Guitar, Bass, Vocals and Music Production lessons and classes were offered.

After graduating from Berklee College Music, Dave's daughter, Kaylee Contois, join our team as a music instructor.

Contois School of Music was discontinued in September 2019.

In September of 2019, in collaboration with Dave's son, Trevor Contois, Soli Music was established to provide more innovative music education programs and remote learning.

Unfortunately, like a lot of business, Soli Music had to shut down it's on-site lessons March 17, 2020. Soli Music is now offering remote learning programs using the G-Suite and Google Classroom platform. Our building on Pearl Street in Essex Junction is up for sale or lease and we are actively looking for an alternate location to provide on-site lessons again after the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.