Juilliard Master's Candidate and substitute horn player with the New World Symphony, teaching brass instruments online

Find out more about Michael

• When did you first develop a passion for music and your favorite instrument?

  I first began playing the piano when I was about three years old, however, I can't say I truly fell in love with music until I was about twelve, when I met two new music teachers who were both intensely passionate about music of all styles. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and they have become lifelong mentors! I also began composing and playing the French horn, trombone, trumpet, and euphonium at around the same time, and I think that finding an instrument (or in my case, a family of instruments!) that really felt like a part of me also helped encourage me to continue pursuing music.

• Is there a particular type of music or artist that you listen to on a loop without it driving you crazy?

  There is so much amazing music out there in the world! Although I spend most of my time working with orchestral and concert band music, my favourite genre of music is probably Musical Theatre, especially from composers such as Stephen Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, and Leonard Bernstein.

• Explain to us the most difficult or riveting course you could personally give to a student of music.

  There are riveting and difficult challenges for any student in music, and what they are depends on the interests of the student. An orchestral musician may benefit from a rigorous examination of their physical posture and mental strategies to achieve peak performance under pressure, while a student interested in composition would much prefer to dive headfirst into an extremely comprehensive series of lessons on ear training and counterpoint. Someone well versed in electronic music and Digital Audio Workstations would have a completely different set of challenges, involving plugins and technical know-how which are simply not part of playing an acoustic instrument. There's something in music for everyone!

• What do you think is the most complicated instrument to master and why?

  While I think that professional musicians on all instruments must have a similar level of craft, there are certainly some instruments that are more difficult to begin on than others. For example, in brass instruments we have to "buzz" the correct notes with our lips, but some instruments like the trumpet and trombone have wider gaps between notes with the same fingering or slide position. In contrast, the French horn's middle register has many more notes which may be played with the same fingering, so it is more difficult for a student to reliably find the "correct" notes even if their fingers are pressing the right buttons. This can be extremely disheartening for a student who may be the only horn player in their band. When I teach French horn I spend much more time with beginning students developing basic lip and air accuracy without the fingers than I do with trumpet and trombone students.

• What are your keys to success?

  I think that approaching instrument technique like a scientist in a lab is the best method to find results which work for YOU! Many of my exercises for young players allow the players to gradually "feel" where and how to play every different note, as opposed to being given a recipe book and told to learn how to do it my way. Whenever something blows up in my lab, it's a chance to ask questions: "What was I doing when that happened?" "What did it feel like when it worked?"

• Name three musicians you dream of meeting in your favourite bar in the early hours of the morning. Explain why.

  If I could meet any musicians from any time period, I think I would love to meet Vincent DeRosa, Oskar Morawetz, and Stephen Sondheim. Vincent DeRosa was the most recorded horn player in Hollywood in his time, and his sound is still the sound that many of us think of when we think of classic film scores by composers such as John Williams and Henry Mancini. Oskar Morawetz was a Jewish composer who moved to Canada early in his career and taught at the University of Toronto and the Glenn Gould School. He taught my first two composition teachers, and I would have loved to meet him personally if I had had the chance. Finally, Stephen Sondheim is such an inspiration to any composer who has had to write their own lyrics for a song or opera. I would have loved to meet him and learn how he balanced writing both intriguing music and text.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to music or your days at music school.

  While at Juilliard, I had the immense privilege to play in a concert conducted by John Adams--one of America's foremost living composers. We played music by Debussy, Beethoven, and John Adams himself. Although these three composers could not sound any more different, I was amazed at the level of commitment and expression which Maestro Adams was able to find in all three. In that series of rehearsals leading up to the concert, I began to understand that all music--although it has changed in many ways over the past few centuries--is built on the same foundations and demands the same level of attention, respect, and expression.

• What are the little touches that make you a Superprof in music?

  I think that my dual experience as a composer working with music technology and a performer working with live orchestral instruments makes me uniquely qualified for teaching both online. My performance lessons are augmented by technology such as dedicated instrument microphones which gives the student a clearer picture of how I'm playing and how I would like them to play, and my composition, orchestration, and theory lessons are informed by decades of hands-on experience performing timeless music by truly great composers and also augmented by immediate access to annotated PDFs and virtual midi keyboard displays, if needed.