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Bio and Brief After obtaining a Bachelor of Music in Music Education Degree (University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon SK Canada), I have taught in the public school system, the Mount Royal University Conservatory (Calgary AB), at a private school in Montreal, and currently at my teaching studio in the West Island of Montréal (in-studio and online). I have adjudicated at music festivals, given masterclasses to classical guitar soloists and ensembles, coached student rock bands for performances, and prepared numerous soloists for RCM exams. My past performance experience includes the formats of solo guitar music, concerto soloist with a string orchestra, various chamber music settings with flutists and soprano vocalists, and guitar duos and quartets in university faculty concert series performances. I have also performed lead and rhythm guitar on electric and acoustic guitars, backing singer songwriters and live bands. I embrace diversity strongly because of the wealth of culture and knowledge to be learned and enjoyed by engulfing oneself in a multitude of beautiful music. Recent performances were for private functions at Chateau Lake Louise, various performance locations in Banff and Calgary AB, L'Auberge des Gallants, Château Montebello QC, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Auberge le Saint Gabriel, Forest and Stream Club (Dorval QC), Mont Tremblant, Parisian Laundry, l'Hôtel Lac Carling, Hyatt Regency Montréal, Botanical Gardens (Montreal), l'Orée du Bois (Sainte-Adèle QC), Villa Armando, Ritz Carlton, Haut Bois Normand, Hyatt Regency, le Windsor Montréal, and other venues. Both in studio and online, I maintain an active teaching schedule in classical, fingerstyle and popular styles of guitar playing. I passionately share technical knowledge, ideas regarding harmony, song structure, form, playing expressively, lead guitar, improvisation, and learning to sing while playing a variety of strum and fingerstyle patterns. I have created tablatures for hundreds of songs, all of which are accessible to my students. Classical studies, scales, scale picking patterns, Celtic tunes, arpeggios, and various other technical tools are chosen specifically to address particular student deficiencies, with the goal of having them play with greater facility and expression. During the study of a piece, regardless of muscial genre, I regularly reference quality recordings. The use multi-tracking software is also valuable, as I regularly record layered ideas (guitar tracks with songs, blues leads, classical duets, string bends, etc.), so that my students can better hear a specific part, or make use of a practice track. With constant practice, persistence, and a lot of enthusiasm, guitar students can get to a point where they have a sufficient amount of technical 'auto-pilot', therefore enabling them to focus on timing, rhythm, dynamics, and all of the aesthetic qualities of music which make it super fun to play!
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