Teaching Philosophy
My general teaching philosophy is that I want my students to become versatile educators and performers that can traverse multiple styles and genres so that they can effectively communicate their teaching and artistry to future students and audiences.
As a Brass educator, my teaching philosophy starts with grounding students with the fundamentals of sound production, flexibility, articulation, and dexterity. I believe it is important that students develop the necessary tools to become excellent operators and facilitators of their chosen instrument. Concurrently, it is crucial that students apply these fundamentals while musically conveying a message that is both personal to the performer and meaningful to your audience.
As a Jazz educator, I believe it is critical that students imitate and assimilate time, language, and jazz math by completing jazz transcription projects that are learned through aural repetition. Once these transcription projects have been learned and able to be played with the original recordings, students learn to isolate modal, ii-V-I patterns, iii-VI-ii-V patterns, and other significant harmony and form constructs in all 12 keys. Students eventually learn to transpose forms into all 12 keys by learning forms through generalized key relationships and eventually learn more complex harmonic and melodic concepts such as modes of harmonic minor and Trane matrices.
As an Aural Skills and Music Theory educator, I believe that all concepts taught inside the Aural Skills and Music Theory classrooms need to simultaneously inform both disciplines. I want my students to both aurally and cognitively explore music theory and aural skills through real life application that will be beneficial in their future performing and education careers.