Arrangement and Composition with Bobby S.

I am a jazz trumpeter, improviser, and composer as well as an avid listener and enthusiastic educator. I maintain an active performance schedule playing improvised music as well as funk, soul, afro-beat, reggae, hip-hop, and American folk music. In addition to trumpet, I have experience performing and recording on slide trumpet, trombone, baritone horn, and french horn. I write and arrange music for my own groups and regularly write and record horn arrangements for folk, pop, and reggae groups. I have attended Berklee College of Music and Ithaca College, and I have a Master's degree in jazz trumpet performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. I have over nine years of experience working with students ages 7 to adult. I have worked both from my home studio and though several public and community music school programs including the Hudson Arts Alliance in Hudson, MA, the Kittredge Elementary School in North Andover, MA, and the Performing Arts Center of Metro West in Framingham, MA. I have studied jazz performance with trumpet greats John McNeil and Walter White, improvisation with jazz gurus David Schumacher and Jerry Bergonzi, and George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization with master composer and theorist Ben Schwendener. As an educator, my aim is to inspire in my students an enthusiasm for the artistic performance of music of any style. I strive to convey my own excitement for the art to young trumpeters and improvisers, and I have worked to encourage self-motivation and a longstanding interest in musical self-expression in elementary through high school students and adults. I have experience performing many styles of music from jazz and experimental improvised music to funk, reggae, and afro-beat, and I use my knowledge of divergent genres to encourage creative experimentation and convey the expressive artistic elements shared by all music. As an improviser I am particularly interested in teaching the theory and philosophy of spontaneous composition and musical communication.