Joan Koenig has made a career out of a passion. She is that rare thing: a piper who calls her own tune. Koenig founded her own “alternative music school” in 1986 in reaction to what she saw as the French straitjacketed musical education tradition. She wasn’t deterred by the prospect of confronting the infamous French bureaucracy: “I just opened a bank account and started writing cheques to pay people!” she cheerfully admits with her typical can-do confidence. “Luckily there were three fantastic parents who helped out [establishing the school].”

What Koenig reacted against a little over 20 years ago was her experience of seeing young music students receive only a twenty-minute hands-on lesson a week. It was then it hit home to her that the typical French conservatoire is very different from its American counterpart.

The French tradition of teaching music, which places a heavy emphasis on mastering solfège (musical notation) as a prerequisite to learning any instrument, seemed scandalously counter-intuitive to this Julliard-schooled flautist. “It’s as if you were learning a foreign language but only allowed to read and write it for the first two years”—which, of course, is how languages are taught in France.

Concealed behind an inconspicuous entrance on a quiet street of the 15th arrondissement, L’Ecole Koenig, with about 400 pupils, retains a familial atmosphere. Run by Koenig and co-director Margaret Cook, a fellow American who joined in 1988, and staffed by a dedicated team of international teachers, it places creativity at the fore, giving students every opportunity to develop and perform, with a yearly show and regular recitals, as well as concerts at the Sunset Jazz Club for teenagers. The school even offers parent-children “baby-bop” classes to plug very young kids into their innate sense of rhythm.

Instinctively musical, it was Koenig herself who at five pushed her parents to provide piano and subsequently flute lessons. Music has always been a transformative force in her life, bringing her first to New York to study at Julliard in 1977 and then to Paris. Arriving in New York from her family home in Washington D.C., she was thrilled to witness a film shoot at Lincoln Center: “I just thought, ‘This is the centre of the world. How can anyone stand not to be in the centre of the world!’”

The centre of her world moved definitively to Paris when she came here in 1981 to study with the world-class flautist Alain Marion and, falling under the city’s spell, decided to stay. “I got invited out all the time—to the ballet, opera… Everybody wanted to have a ‘musician’ at their party,” recalls Koenig, a mischievous glimmer in her blue eyes.

Like many long-term ex-pats, Koenig reminisces about the capital’s “good old days.” “French children were a dream,” she remembers, whereas in recent years, she and her colleagues have seen the rise of les enfants-rois (kids spoilt by time-poor parents).

However, Koenig remains resolutely plugged into the present and as determined as ever. As well as teaching and overseeing the school, she actively seeks donors, in particular to fund scholarships for gifted children whose families cannot afford the Ecole Koenig’s not inconsiderable fees. “Learning a musical instrument is not cheap!” she notes, with one of the explosive laughs that spontaneously punctuate her sentences.

She is in the middle of relocating to the 20th arrondissement and, far from being burnt out with the stress of moving, she is positively firing on all cylinders, excited at the prospect of exploring a new area. One can’t help but be impressed by her vitality—and slightly envious.

The Ecole Koenig, 33, rue Fondary, Paris 15. Mº Emile Zola. 01 45 78 01 75. www.ecolekoenig.com