At this year’s Texas Music Educators Association convention, I presented a clinic designed for band directors who do not play low brass but need to teach these instruments. Several times when I have gone into schools to coach the students, directors have asked me about the F attachment and 4th valve on their trombones, euphoniums […]

When I started college as a music major, I was worried that I was very far behind my peers. All of my friends knew so much about things I had no experience with. They could talk at length about historical conductors, prominent orchestral musicians, operas, instrument models, and on and on. Not knowing anything about […]

At this year’s International Trombone Festival, I presented a lecture entitled “Jazz Pedagogy for Classical Repertoire.” In this session, I tried to highlight some of the concepts that I’ve noticed get more emphasis in a “jazz” education than a “classical” education but are equally important in both genres. I had a few requests for my slides, so […]

I’ve recently changed the order in which I teach my lessons. I used to start most lessons (at least with younger students) by working through lip slurs and other fundamentals. By covering the technical bases first, I felt like I could already tell how their practice the previous week had gone, what issues were causing problems, […]