Ciara McAllister

MMS Owner/Founder

Piano, Singer/Songwriting, Performance Coaching, Artist Development, Producer

Ciara McAllister is a San Francisco based recording artist, songwriter, pianist, producer, piano teacher, performance coach, and owner of McAllister Music Studio.

Ciara began her journey in music at age six when she fell in love with the piano through the nurturing of her amazing music teacher, Ms. Denise. Ms. Denise taught Ciara first and foremost to love music, and love she did! She learned at an early age to read notes and play by ear and by age ten she was playing keyboard in her church band. This is when she discovered her passion for sharing music with others through collaboration and her ears began to open up to how all the different players, instruments, and vocalists intertwined to create the full spectrum and frequencies of sounds.

At age sixteen, Ciara headed to music school to pursue a degree in classical Piano Performance. It was here that she also started to study jazz, private voice, choral arranging, and orchestration. After college she opened her first music school at the age of 21. She was teaching students of all ages and sharing her love and passion for music with everyone around her. She also began playing in rock bands, finally really digging into the songwriting that had been tugging at her since she was a young girl.

In 2005, Ciara headed to San Francisco to pursue her dream of being a musician in the city that to her represented freedom, love, and creative expression. She dove full force into the music scene, played in several bands and local jams, until she found her way to the friends and members of what would be the rock band, Hidden in the Sun. Hidden in the Sun raised $20,000 in a kickstarter to record and release their album, Seven Seasons, which received praise from Pop Music Critic, Steve Hochman, and was included in the California Report’s best albums of the year in 2025. During this time, Ciara was casually forming what is now McAllister Music Studio. She was teaching out of her apartment and eventually brought on her first round of teachers to help with the tremendous load of inquiries she was getting from interested students. In 2015, she opened her first commercial space, at Haight and Fillmore in the Lower Haight which had 2 private teaching studios and a small common space to host MMS’s infamous “Lower Haight Music Night” open mic nights. By 2017, the Lower Haight studio was bursting at the scene and so she began operations to open her second commercial space, MMS mission, which hosts 3 teaching studios, a state of the art recording studio, and another open space for small events, living room style concerts, and recording sessions. During the pandemic, Ciara closed the Lower Haight studio and focused her energy on launching the MMS online school, which is still vibrant today and includes students and teachers all over the country. 

Ciara currently works as a coach and teacher for singer/songwriters and artists in San Francisco and around the US.  As a producer, one of her favorite things is to be in the studio with a new artist and guide them along the journey of getting their music to come to life in the way they envision. She works as a songwriter, both for herself, other artists, and her students.  She released her debut solo album, To Shimmering Light, in 2021, and released an EP, Spellbound, with her rock band, Hidden in the Sun, in 2024. She is currently focused on a new project, a female duo, Kitten Around, in which she writes and produces. Kitten Around plans to release their first single in 2025.

Ciara is proud to be able to inspire so many students and artists to believe in their musical journey, to love the process, and to find the simple and yet profound joy in being a music maker and sharing music with the world.