Sixty minutes with Marc to help you explore the instrument more deeply, express your ideas more freely, and develop a more personal relationship with music.
Sample Topics
Fretboard harmony and visualization
Improvisation strategies
Developing your compositional voice
Creative practice and artistic growth
Collaborative approaches to music-making
Songwriting, arranging, and musical storytelling
Technique in service of expression
Guidelines
All experience levels welcome
Ages 18+ (younger students may be admitted upon approval)
Bring your own instrument (loaner available upon approval)
Online lessons available worldwide
In-person lessons available upon approval
Conceived during the 2020 pandemic, this composition serves as an exploration of relinquishing one’s role as an instrumentalist and composer. Pursuing beauty without the constraints of a traditional tonal system, Mudlark represents an attempt to transcend conscious musical expression, to observe the inherent duality of chaos and beauty that permeates existence, and to delve deeper into the intricacies of the human condition.
Titled “Nubia la Nica”, this original composition was written in remembrance of my late grandmother. A former watch repairwoman and small business owner in Nicaragua, she made her way to the US at the age of 20 during the 1950’s. In the six decades that followed, Nubia became a mother of two, a grandmother of four, and a cherished friend of many. To me, she embodies the highest of work ethics and the deepest of loves.
Format: Standard Notation (+ chord symbols)
Performance Length: 2 mins 16 seconds
From Spanish, 'gallo pinto' is a term popularly used in Nicaragua to refer to a fried/mixed dish of rice and beans—a staple of the Latin American diet. Literally, the phrase translates to spotted rooster. The mixed dish was given this name due to its resemblance of a local, spotted rooster species.
Gallo Pinto was written over the course of several months in the spring of 2022. Large sections were improvised at a time. Further in the process, single sections were performed in a loop and embellished for extended periods—allowing the composer to continue developing variations and transitions in a performance-led compositional approach.
Like many dishes around the world, Gallo Pinto makes use of available/remaining ingredients to reduce food waste among working class households. In this manner, the composer decided to incorporate the textures and (untransposed) sounds of his aural environment throughout the writing process—opting to embrace the reality of living and working in an inevitably non-silent space. For example, if a car horn sounded during a writing session, then it was added (with the same pitch and rhythm) at the time in the piece that it occurred. Gallo Pinto is a natural manifestation of the composer’s musical thoughts combined with the aural collage of his daily experience.
This lead sheet is a summary of the original piano and violin score by Heifetz. Improvising musicians familiar with chord symbol theory will not only be enabled to realize their own accompaniment with this lead sheet, but also be prepared to more clearly follow the melodic-leading instrumentalist.
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