Faculty Biography
Jeff Galindo, Assistant Professor
"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.
"Berklee is a great school, with so much to offer. Again, music is a language, and if I were to try to learn Japanese, I would be best served by going to Japan. A student wanting to learn the language of music, in all it incarnations, will be best served by coming here to Berklee."
- Alumnus, Berklee College of Music
- Performances with Jerry Bergonzi, the Boston Pops, Ray Charles, Chick Corea, the Chico O'Farrill Orchestra, Buddy DeFranco, the Jeff Galindo Quartet with Bob Gullotti and John Lockwood, George Garzone, Johnny Griffin, the Galindo/Phaneuf Sextet, the Kenny Hadley Big Band, the Greg Hopkins Big Band and Nonet, Bob Moses, Herb Pomeroy, Artie Shaw Orchestra, Gunther Schuller, Bobby Shew, Clark Terry, and others
- Recordings include Congeniality with Charlie Kohlhase and Mitch Seidman, Locking Horns with the Galindo/Phaneuf Sextet on TTwin TTower Records, Come Sunday and A Beautiful Friendship with the Kenny Hadley Big Band on KEPABR Records, and Time Stood Still with Bob Moses on Gramavision Records
- Extensive freelance work on the East Coast
- Tours of Japan with Makoto Ozone and Europe with Phil Woods
Top Five Influences
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Early Influences
Louis Armstrong
How can you top any five of these great artists? I feel that these top five areas of influence is about the best I could do. Louis certainly heads this list with Jack Teagarden, Vic Dickenson, Trummy Young, etc. Listening to as many and as much of their material taught me how to play a melody.
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Swing Influences
Bill Harris
These guys taught me how to swing. Along with Bill are Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, etc.
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Be-Bop
Charlie Parker
Bird, of course, heads this list, followed by Dizzy Gillespie, J.J. Johnson, Frank Rosolino, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Brown, etc.
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Sonny and Trane
Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane
They get their own category. But as improvisors they are two of the ultra-greats. I also put Lee Konitz and Ornette Coleman on this list.
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Modern Guys
Roswell Rudd
Some of my other modern influences besides Roswell are Gary Valente, Hal Crook, George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, plus many more I am sure have slipped my mind at this moment.
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