It has been a great pleasure and privilege for me to train guitarists at UNCSA for over 20 years now. I am immensely gratified by watching our artists grow and develop while they are part of the program, and to continue to see their artistry and lives flourish as they pursue their paths. Once a student is accepted, I am devoted for life to nurturing their wellness, skill and passion and helping them remove the obstacles to pursuing their dreams.

I believe that everybody has the capacity to perform and create any style of music beautifully, easily, and without fear or frustration. This potential has everything to do with how we learn and the choices we make on how we spend our time. Our time is the most precious gift we have been given - using it well benefits enormously from expert, well-considered instruction.

My 30 + year career of consistently performing a variety of music has given me a privileged platform for understanding and exploring the practices that lead most directly to personal satisfaction in front of an audience or microphone. The good fortune I have had traveling extensively around North America to lead hundreds of workshops for guitar students and teachers has added valuable perspective on the experiences and industry my graduates will encounter. The many years of specific training I have pursued in music pedagogy and as a teacher of the Alexander Technique have deepened my understanding of how people learn a skill and the critical role a teacher plays in guiding this development.

These experiences have led me on a journey to design a curriculum for our UNCSA guitarists that gives a lot of specific direction yet leads to infinite possibility. Since learning a ‘skill’ is much less about what someone ‘knows’ and much more about what someone ‘does’ – I make use of detailed activities, practiced together in lessons and group sessions, that target the underlying abilities that allow a musician to learn music quickly and confidently and to free their imagination to create unencumbered. I’m often saddened by how much unnecessary struggle and suffering I observe in the greater world of studying guitar-so I am committed to breaking down the myths of inborn musical talent, mystical artistic powers, and mindless and endless repetition. I think the guitarists at UNCSA have fun, feel empowered, and play beautifully and I invite you to come for a visit and see for yourself!

Music has a unique power to heal, nourish and uplift, and it has enriched my life immeasurably. I feel fortunate to share my passion for music, and my respect for its power — both for practitioners and for the communities we serve — in my work as a music educator. I seek foremost to nurture the artistic spirit that is present within each of us. To do so requires a delicate balance, with clear guidance on the one hand and attentiveness and open-mindedness on the other.  

Every student is enriched by the cultivation of a profound awareness of the elements that constitute their chosen artistic discipline. Music is richly diverse in this regard; our work is at once intellectual, emotional, physical, and multi-sensory. I seek to guide my students toward an awareness of movement that culminates in a free and flexible technique, allowing for the expression of the widest possible range of musical ideas. As movement initiates from the mind, I work with students to instill skillful and effective habits of mind in practice and in performance. Similarly, I guide them to hear the elements of music clearly and insightfully. These include rhythm, melody, harmony and texture.  Learning to skillfully perceive and express these elements is an essential aspect of serious music study.

For students moving toward musical careers, it is necessary to supply the resources needed for success in a challenging and shifting marketplace. Happily, what is needed here overlaps with what is needed to serve our purely artistic goals: the ability to learn music from various traditions efficiently and well; a deep knowledge of the materials of music (rhythms, scales, harmonies); an assured and engaging command of our instrument; the ability to communicate and interact professionally with other musicians, and with non-musicians; familiarity with the traditions in which we work and create. It is also important to foster the curiosity required to keep exploring and learning as new possibilities arise, as they inevitably will.  

It is a music teacher’s job to distill from the infinite possibilities a path toward a secure and well-rounded musicianship, allowing for a lifetime of artistic growth and career opportunities, and to provide a space and community for this work to be done. That is what I am privileged to do alongside my colleague Joseph Pecoraro at UNCSA.