Faculty Biography

"I was a freshman in high school when I started playing the bass. One day, my father brought a guitar home, and I liked the bottom four strings; I liked the lowness. So we switched the guitar for a bass. It felt very natural.

"The wonderful thing about the bass is that it's used in just about every type and style of music. If you have the ability to play the double bass and electric bass, you are so much in demand. Any kind of a pop, rock, jazz, or funk band will have a bass player. Any pit orchestra, any large orchestra, any small orchestra, will have at least one bass player in it. So you have the opportunity to be involved in so many ways. There are so many genres that you can choose from when you play this instrument.

"I teach quite a few reading labs, all different levels; I have beginners and much more advanced readers, too. You have to treat them all differently, naturally, but as you get to someone who's a little more advanced with reading, you can start to work on the aspects of reading that will make it sound like you're not reading. I try to equate this to reading a paragraph to an audience and having the ability to make it really feel natural, spoken word rather than read off of a page.

"My hope is that some of my students will go on to become teachers. I also hope that some of them will be performers, naturally. And while I'm not involved in the aspect of arranging and writing, I'm sure many of my students become arrangers and writers, and I hope that my area of expertise is helping them put together music that is clear and concise."