Faculty Biography

"We want Contemporary Writing and Production graduates to be strong enough to work within any professional environment. We would like them to be able to say 'Yes!' to anyone who wants a project written, arranged, or produced in a contemporary music setting. I try to give students the life skills to allow them to do anything in the music world.

"The CWP curriculum has been totally honed and revamped over the last 15 years. It's very current. It's not just based on current music, but it's very current on all the levels of writing and production. The faculty members are the best I've been associated with, in terms of the broad spectrum of abilities and writing talents. And with more than 4,000 students from all over the world, there is an incredible network.

"In Introduction to Writing and Production for the Recording Studio, students have three projects. Two of them, a jingle and a song, happen in a real recording studio. They're writing all the charts and they're doing demos. We go to a real studio and the teachers hire really good players. They have to make a multi-track recording, and then take it home and mix it.

"I created a Groove Writing class, which I thought would be a great way to build a vocabulary of styles. My teaching approach in this class is to explore the Afro-European mix in the Western hemisphere and demonstrate how that influenced the development of contemporary music as we hear it today.

"I love to learn new things. Because things are always evolving, I try not to be repetitive and have my classes be exactly the same every semester. Inevitably, I learn something from the students. It's more of a cooperative experience. I still practice every day and study with master teachers. I want students to have that same love, and if they get inspired about learning, and inspired about the material, then they're going to want to develop in their lives and keep growing."