Receiving a grant from Joe Bonamassa’s Keepin’ the Blues Alive Foundation for the school.

• The grant allowed the purchase of 36 acoustic guitars, 3 electric guitars, 3 electric basses, 6 61 key MIDI keyboards, a drum set, and a fender passport for the classroom.

• One year later, journalist Dan Gross did follow up to the story. The clip includes an interview with two of my amazing students and some short thoughts from me.

I invited the guitarist from Hamilton: An American Musical to speak with my guitar classes after seeing opening night performance in Rochester. He generously accepted and extended the invitation to two other musicians in the pit. I opened the conversation to any student who I thought would be interested in hearing what they had to share about being professional musicians. A big thank you to Adam Kornreich (guitar), Anna Luce (violin), and Sam Bagala (keyboards) for speaking with the students. 

Creating a Live Music & Sound Production Intensive (a three day intensive study of a student-selected subject). In our intensive, we:

• Visited Green Room Recording Studio with Mr. Matt Rammerman (owner), recording demonstration and music industry discussion.

• Toured Anthology (a 1000 cap. venue) with owner Mr. Phil Fitzsimmons, followed by a Q&A with Mr. Anthony Washington, a DJ at WDKX 103.9 Radio Station.

• Toured Flour City Station (a 250 cap. venue) with general manager Mr. Matt Green, followed by discussion about marketing

• Toured Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC), students explored degree options related to music recording and production, Q&A on college student life and scholarship options.

• Toured the House of Guitars with Mr. Mike Follett, toured recording studio, discussion live sound production and commercial products available. 

• Visited Guitar Center with a brief tour and presentation on the hardware and software available for those interested in home audio production.

Whenever I see my students post a video to YouTube or hear they’ll playing at a local open mic in Rochester. Arabella has been a student of mine through her time as a high school student. Here’s a link to her YouTube channel.

Designing a podcasting project using only a chrome book

• Researching a topic and recording a podcast from start to finish using only a Google Chromebook can seem impossible. I created this project when I was pushing into classrooms daily (an English, Science, or Art classroom). Here’s a .pdf of the project overview with embedded links to all the resources we use throughout the project.