Teaching Philosophy

I believe that learning thrives in a positive environment that balances patience, encouragement, curiosity, structure, and challenge. An effective teacher-student partnership is key to this and hinges on trust, honesty, and mutual respect. I encourage students to be honest with themselves about their discipline and commitment, set challenging goals for themselves, and approach their oboe studies with a growth mindset. Growth is inevitable when openness, understanding, empowerment, confidence, hard work, and perseverance come together both in lessons and the practice room. Amazing things can happen when a student decides to take ownership of their journey, participate fully, hold to priorities, and give commitments their all.

Failure and Resilience

I believe failure to be a crucial component of learning, a sign that boundaries are being pushing and limitations stretched. As a teacher, I consider it vital to model this. If I crash and burn in a performance, ruin a reed with a dull knife, or simply find myself struggling with motivation to practice, I make it a teachable moment because struggle and failure is a big part of how we learn. I consider my academic duty to provide clear structure, cultivate broad-based understanding, and motivate resilient perseverance, but my ultimate goal is to guide students toward becoming thriving, independent musicians capable of standing on their own.

Unique Voices

Every musician has something beautiful and unique to offer the world through their music. That sacred potential can only be liberated through hard work, so I work tirelessly to equip students with the knowledge, tools, skills, and confidence to pursue steady, incremental growth that over time removes more and more barriers to the unfettered expression of their art.

Musical Philosophy

The most compelling music making comes from the heart. Skills and abilities are honed not for their own sake, but as the means to honest self-expression of the

sort that ultimately makes the world a better place. Originality, creativity, and imagination are all key components in making music, and should be structurally involved in every musician’s pursuits, even from the very beginning of their studies. I feel strongly that the oboe should mimic the nuanced, expressive capabilities of the human voice. Listening therefore is of primary importance—to the great artists for inspiration, to colleagues for ensemble and context, and to oneself to inform growth and progress. Confident, thoughtful, intuitive, goal-oriented playing that achieves affective musical motion through a broad pallet of air speeds, colors, articulations, intensities, and dynamics is a worthy vision for every student. Good musical intuition is informed by careful study, perceptive listening, and purposeful reflection.

Technical Philosophy

The technique of playing should be centered around and result in a way of production that achieves ease, fluidity, and fluency in support of musical expression. This means that finger movement should be economical, articulation should be ringing and ongoing, embouchure should be flexible and supportive, and response should be assured, easy, and of a character suitable to the music. The oboe should have a beautifully round sound with core, depth, range,

ring, and color. The vibrato should be well integrated into the tone, deepening the sound with varied intensity as the music demands. To achieve this, the setup must somehow allow the mouth to be open and the jaws apart. Support, air focus, and deep breathing are critical to ease of playing and a beautiful tone. The reed must do its part. Namely, it must be up enough in pitch and gathered enough in tone to allow a deep voicing without being flat. Control over the extreme registers of the instruments should sound as easy and nuanced as everything else. Maintaining a daily warmup routine that promotes growth in these ways is crucial to unhindered musical expression.

Reed Making Philosophy

Reed making, in so much as it is possible, should be a scientific process that produces the consistency necessary for confident control and musical expression. In other words, the process must have objectively measurable tests, specifications, and tolerances. There is no reason that reed making need be a mysteriously unpredictable source of anxiety and frustration. Reeds should be stable in pitch and tonal core, while allowing for great flexibility of expression, color, dynamic range, and articulation. They should not fatigue the embouchure or the air support musculature. Reeds are not a one-size-fits-all sort of affair—they must suit the specific player, instrument, music, and acoustic. It is vital that students become predictably adept at making reeds so that dread, stress, and worry over having good reeds for performance and practice does not become a life-ruining prospect. All of that said however, students need to be flexible enough in production so that the inevitable less-than-perfect reed can be convincingly accommodated.