Online
I offer private lessons and mentorship on the following subjects:
- Composition
- Orchestration
- Conducting
- Development of multimedia performances
Context
My approach to teaching is rooted in my own artistic practice. I have been making music for over forty years — as a composer, conductor, orchestrator, mentor, and multimedia artist. I have lived in three major North American cities — Montréal, New York, and San Francisco — and have collaborated with musicians Internationally. In general, I favor a rigorous approach to the craft of composing music and notation.
From the start of my career, my compositional approach favored the importance of color and textures. This approach, which I call Orchestration as Design, consists of a practice that emphasizes the perception of timbres, color and textures as structural principles in composition.
Orchestration as design
The Orchestration as Design process invites the composer to adopt a global approach instead of a sequential or cellular approach. This method encourages the composer to focus on the very specific way that the instruments sound with each other and how these sounds are produced. Orchestration as Design encourages the conception of a work as a continuous gesture unfolding in real-time before identifying the important details of harmony and pitch systems.
Creation
The paradigms raised in the act of creating continues to fascinate me. In my teaching, I appreciate discovering the investigations my students make and the perpetual challenge of the ever-changing aesthetics of music
What does it mean to be a creative artist in the 21st century at a time where the digital world has completely changed the landscape as we knew it just 50 years ago? Why is it important to create? What makes the journey valuable? Is it essential to develop collaborations across different practices? What might we learn from other artistic practices? What kind of space — physical or virtual — is the best space to experience your type of music? How would you define your responsibility as an artist?
These are just a few of the questions we can reflect on as creators. Artists do not create in a vacuum and the community we create with our work and around our work is a manifestation of the impact our artistic practice can have on our rapidly changing society.
