Low Brass Lessons

I currently teach trombone, euphonium, tuba, and jazz improvisation/theory lessons at Lyriq School of Music or in student’s homes in Chicago, Hinsdale South High School in Darien, Il, at Riverside-Brookfield High School in Riverside, Il, at Lake Zurich High School in Lake Zurich, Il, and online for students outside the Chicago area.

The goal in lessons is not only to improve the student’s skills on their instrument, but to help students wake up their musical imagination and connect the instrument to what they hear in their minds. It’s so easy to simply focus on scales, technical patterns, and music for school band (all of which is important); I want to go farther, though, and help students find a lifelong passion and a new way of expressing themselves.

With these goals in mind, lessons can cover a broad range of subjects;

  • Audiation (musical imagination) and connecting the ear to the instrument

  • Tone production and articulation

  • Lip slurs and control over extreme registers

  • Scales and arpeggios, and how they relate to chord structures

  • Sight reading

  • Music from school ensembles and upcoming auditions

  • Ear training, music theory, and analysis of musical forms

  • Improvisation in jazz and European classical vocabularies


This regimen can help students achieve whatever outcome they have want, whether they wish to ace a seating audition at school, audition for a district or all state band, or rise to the level where they can begin performing professionally.