It really is an investment in time. You start with the simple idea and you move on from there. For me, It was a question: How can I make the band experience more enjoyable for students?

As an educator, it’s more satisfying when your students are curious about the subject because they enjoy it. Students love to be challenged… to be pushed but also supported. They love that feeling of accomplishing a goal that they really weren’t sure that they could do. It’s those “click” moments that I love so much

I had been teaching for about 15 or 16 years at that point; the last two or three years were strictly teaching private lessons. It was great to be able to really dive deep into what the student wanted to learn and become a better instrumentalist. I really wanted to help more children enjoy their instruments. Wouldn’t it be great to have a place where all of my private students could all play together? In one ensemble! They were all in different stages of development: I had some middle school students, some high school students and some elementary students. So that wouldn’t really work… Not really… or could it?

I had a larger number of middle school students, so we would start there. I could use the high school students to “mentor” the middle school students and the elementary students are definitely going to want to imitate their cool elder counterparts. And this is where the rough Idea began: I would create an ensemble of middle school and elementary age students with some high school students peppered in for leadership and support. I can push more challenging music, and we can do it on the weekends so it don’t have to choose my ensemble over the other afterschool programs that they want to do. I can help them to become stronger players for their schools and in turn, their band programs can become stronger and they will love playing their instruments more!

this was going to be my foundation! As I was formulating this ensemble, my students kept asking questions to satisfy their curiosity: How do you improvise in jazz? Can I play something other than the blues scale? How do I make my solos more interesting? I want to try out for Drum Major, can you help me with the conducting part? Because Of these questions, I realized that I could help them with everything they wanted to know Musically! I could devote a class for each subject they wanted to learn: Jazz- improvising and soloing; Music theory; conducting; playing a second instrument… the possibilities were endless! And thus the idea for The Academy for Young Musicians was born.