Lessons

One thing I teach every student is that music is a language. Like English or Spanish or Japanese, music tells a story and can make a person really feel different ways. Like a language, music has sentence structure, phrases, and paragraphs. I teach the students how to understand this and how to begin to interact and communicate as a band.

Although I teach all the fundamentals of the music, I try to get the students beyond that. I teach students how to get this knowledge into their subconscious so they can really listen and play. I encourage students how to develop their own style by listening and being influenced by their favorite players and yet not just copying them.

I want students to be inspired to grow in life as well as music and see how it’s really the same thing. I teach the need for discipline and yet for looseness; to be able to learn something so well that one doesn’t need to think about it, it’s just there. I teach them that it’s not what you play, it’s how you play what you play.

I get every student to understand  what they need to do to improve musically.

My students have included Esperanza Spalding, Leo Genovese, Elliot Mason, and Andre Hayward, among many others.

Lessons on brass performance, technique, jazz improvisation for all instruments, group playing in person or on Skype. Feel free to contact me.