I strive to unlock my students’ inner artists by providing them with a wide range of technical and expressive tools. There is no escaping the fundamental aspects of musical study: technique, physical freedom, training the ear, and dedicated practice. To achieve these, I combine the insights of great violists with the pedagogical philosophies of Suzuki and Rolland to arrive at a balanced and structured approach for my students. My training in pedagogy and technique enables me to effectively provide a straightforward pathway for students to build themselves into performing artists.
Beyond this, my mentorship of individual students is built upon four interrelated pillars: simple practice, personal pedagogy, artistic immersion, and intellectual rigor.
Simple Practice
The modern world is a noisy place. Often, for 18–26-year-olds, the noisiest place is in their own head. Competing voices and ideas—from an Instagram influencer’s “Top 10 Practice Tips” to a student’s own stray thoughts—can crowd a student’s mind and disrupt their practice.
My pedagogy emphasizes simplistic technique, the ability to distill a complicated activity like playing the viola into the simplest elements and focus on fundamental, achievable progress. It’s impossible to focus on all the elements of playing the viola at once. Students must learn how to identify and isolate individual elements to improve them. One of my mentors Mimi Zweig says that “every difficulty lies between two notes.” Approaching every technical challenge at this atomic level allows students to turn off the noise and get to the heart of their playing.
Very often, students want to find a grander, worldwide reason for their technical issues, instead of dialing in and truly identifying the root cause. They didn’t miss the shift because their first teacher at the age 10 was bad and their parents didn’t send them to Aspen; they missed it because their left elbow didn’t swing around, for example.
My teaching provides students with the tools to isolate each difficulty and analyze how to make it easier. I give students a roadmap for working through the logic of diagnosing problems, giving them structure and precision in their practice. Great artists are not made through divine luck; they are built piece by piece, day by day, with thousands of simple steps.
Personal Pedagogy
In the end, every student is self-taught. They practice alone for at least 20 times as much as I spend with them in a week. Given this, they must know how to teach themselves. The study of pedagogy is essential in creating this self-teaching ability. Learning how to teach others enables us to better teach ourselves. If you can explain how to shift to a 7-year-old, you truly understand the concept and can apply it to your own playing. Whether students become full-time teachers or not, understanding the pedagogical process elevates ALL musicians—performers, scholars, and teachers alike.
This concept goes hand in hand with simple practice. By giving ourselves clear, directed instructions in our own practice (the same way that’s required to successfully teach that 7-year-old), we manifest our own growth in the simple, step-by-step manner that builds great musicians.
Artistic Immersion
I am a deep believer in the interconnectedness of the arts. To become an artist, students must immerse themselves in all the arts, from visual art, to theater, to literature, spoken word, and much more. I want my students to have an omnivorous artistic diet. Any artistic statement in a different medium can find resonance in our playing, if we allow it. Wallace Stevens taught me to infuse every gesture with meaning, Joseph Cornell showed me how genius can manifest within constraints, and Willa Cather taught me how to create beauty from the simplest materials, to name just a few.
Just playing the notes only gets you so far. Having artistic touchstones outside of music gives students an entire world of creative resources to draw upon, well beyond the five lines and four spaces on the page.
Intellectual Rigor
All the above elements share the common aspect: intellectual rigor. Developing a probing, curious, and tenacious mind is one of the primary goals of my teaching, and its benefits thread through all parts of a student’s playing. A sharp mind can identify problems quickly and experiment with solutions. A confident self-teacher can chart a trajectory through complicated pieces. A diversified artist brings imagination and wonder to their interpretations. Engagement in the intellectual enterprise of music is foregrounded in my pedagogy. My students study their pieces and composers, envision artistic analogues, and develop practice strategies.
I teach viola majors and minors at Western Kentucky University. I equip all of my students with the tools necessary to become successful 21st-century musicians. My students have gone on to become public school music directors, studio teachers, freelance musicians, musical therapists, counselors, physicists, and much more.
To learn more about studying with me, click below to visit the WKU music website.