Welcome to Five Link Friday! This is my fun Friday post where I hip you to five of my favorite links of the week. Please feel free to share your own favorite links in the comments below! 1. Clean out your horns! We all swab out our horns when we are done playing (or at [...]

Welcome to Five Link Friday – or FLF as I’ll call it. This is where I post my top 5 links from the week. Enjoy! 1) http://www.jazzednet.org/ This week I am attending the Jazz Education Network conference in Louisville, KY. It’s been a blast so far and we still have one more day. You can [...]

“I don’t know what to play” confesses the student when it’s their turn to solo… I’ve heard this quite often from students throughout my years teaching and giving clinics. It is completely understandable, although I suspect that not knowing what to play (in that moment) is directly proportional to not knowing what to practice at [...]

I love to read. I’ve always got at least 2 books going at the same time and I follow a number of blogs and magazines. Probably too many in fact. But I just find it all so interesting!   On a recent trip to Nashville, I brought this book along to read. (I have an [...]

About 2 years ago, a friend of mine recommended that I read Derek Siver’s e-book to get some ideas on how to promote and connect with an audience. The e-book sent me down a new path in my professional life. Not only did I get a lot out of that e-book, but I signed up [...]

  For the last 5 years or so summer has meant “summer reading”. Teachers (and students) are quite familiar with this idea and normally this time of year I am starting my summer reading book with gusto and have every intention of finishing it, complete with post-its tagging important pages and notes in the margins [...]

All music is played by ear.   This statement is very profound to me. For many years I let myself believe that I had “bad ears” and there was nothing I could do about it. From an early age I was able to “think” fast enough to get by, making good choices often enough that [...]