Music For Everyone Call Us: 303.543.3777 Open Hours: Mon – Thurs. – 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm / Sunday – 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Music For Everyone Call Us: 303.543.3777 Open Hours: Mon – Thurs. – 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm / Sunday – 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston for vocal jazz and completed my bachelor’s degree in music and psychology at Naropa University in Boulder in 2019. I have been playing solo gigs for the last decade, and have had the chance to be on stage with a variety of bands as a singer and guitarist.
I studied vocal jazz with acclaimed jazz singer and educator Sunny Wilkinson, who helped expand my repertoire and improvisational chops as a jazz singer. At Berklee, I sang in the Pletenitsa Balkan Choir, which specialised in folk music from the Balkans and Middle East. I continued to focus on songwriting skills at Berklee and even got to study with Livingston Taylor in his stage performance class.
I transitioned to Naropa, where I spent a lot of time writing and improvising in experimental jazz styles. I learned studio techniques and production in my time there, and got to record solo as well as with my band at the time. I have a home studio and currently record my own music, as well as doing session work.
I began my teaching career while at Naropa, where I privately taught piano, guitar, and voice. I’m especially inspired to teach anything in the world of jazz and soul, but I love rock, folk and pop styles as well. I feel my array of experience in diverse musical situations helps inform personalised lesson plans for each student.
I see my role as a teacher is to pivot to each student’s unique needs and musical goals, while keeping health and the love of music as top priorities. I focus heavily on performance and being confident on stage, as well as having lots of real life music skills, like chart writing, that allow students to communicate effectively with musicians. I offer myself as a resource to help people discover new artists and love sharing my knowledge of music. Playing diverse and exciting songs are a core part of my lessons, and I use these tunes as vehicles to learn about scales, techniques and exercises.
When it comes to singing, I dealt with a vocal health struggle at a very young age and was able to naturally heal it, so this is something I have a keen awareness of with voice students. I love helping people find the fullest potential of their voice, and use a wide array of tools and visualisations to help with that.
One of my practice techniques is to learn the chord scales that make up each chord of a song. It’s a great way to train my ears to hear what’s coming, and understand the soloing potential of the whole tune.
Neo Soul: Erykah Badu
Soul: Marvin Gaye
Funk: Sly and the Family Stone
Pop: Joni Mitchell
Jazz: Sarah Vaughan
“You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.” Oscar Peterson
My passion for singing and writing was alive as early as I remember - I still have notebooks filled to the brim with lyrics that I would sing for family and friends. I started singing in a choir around the age of nine, and started voice lessons around that time to correct a vocal health issue. The intense experience of re-training myself how to speak and sing got me intimately connected to my voice, thus beginning my journey as a vocalist. My curiosity and studies in jazz began when I was twelve, and I picked up the electric guitar around this time as well. I took full advantage of my high school’s chorale music program and threw myself into the musical theatre program in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I wrote music and poetry as a teenager, and practically worshipped Fiona Apple. I got to sing in my high school’s jazz band for two years, and attended summer vocal jazz camps at both Western Michigan University and the Jacob’s School of Music at Indiana University. I have enjoyed jamming, writing and performing with various stellar musicians through the years in the Ann Arbor area, Boston, and here around Boulder.
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