Following a daily trumpet practice routine with my son was a definite highlight of my summer. I enjoyed introducing him to some introductory jazz concepts, and it has been really fun observing his progress. Before moving on to a new fall routine, here are some reflections, to document what we practiced over the summer months.…

How do you get a kid to do something for which they have limited interest? Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right incentive. This summer, I wanted my 13-year old son to learn the twelve major scales on his instrument. (Knowing scales is foundational for all music making, but especially for jazz. One…

As many of you know, running has become a daily discipline and passion for me in recent years. In May I ran the Providence Marathon, completing it in 3:24:16. I had thoughts of running the Hartford Marathon in October, but a couple of months into training, my body was telling me to back off. I…

I had the pleasure of playing with tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart on Tuesday evening at the Northampton Jazz Workshop. It is interesting our paths hadn’t crossed before, given that Grant and I are both originally from Canada. He’s a really solid player with a firm grasp of the hard bop vocabulary of tenor titans like…

Three mass shootings in one week, not to mention countless other gun related deaths (suicides, domestic violence, homicides, accidents, etc.) — Is this enough to incite change and spur our lawmakers into action?

Even now, after having studied and played jazz music for more than three decades, there’s still plenty I will admit to not knowing about the art form, and the context in which much of it was created. I was drawn to this music in the late 1980’s, as a Canadian teenager who loved what he…