As a teacher, I always try to focus on what the student is passionate about, while keeping in mind their weaknesses or aversions. When I was a student, the most profound growth I experienced was when I was fully engaged in the act of music making. I want to guide my students along a path to fall in love with music, whatever form that may come in. I know this will be much more valuable than any technique or song I could ever teach them. While I know this is the goal, I am also aware that this won’t happen with every student. Often this process happens further down the line. In those cases I just want them to get the most they can out of music, and enjoy the process of growing as a musician and a person. It is very important to me to teach music to a diverse community of students. This is how I grew up learning music, and it truly is a way of bringing communities together. It has also been my privilege as a teacher to serve many underprivileged communities (as a part of Oakland Summer music, and Oakland Public Conservatory), as I believe everyone deserves access to quality music education. In my private or group lessons, I like to first gauge the students’ listening habits and any music they are listening to. In my experience with younger students, many of them have yet to start listening to music on their own. I try to provide them a space to just listen to music. This way we can work on their technique through music they already enjoy. I will often have them learn songs by ear while also working on some fundamentals such as scales or tonging. We would also work on whatever weaknesses the student may have in their own public music programs or in their other music making. Often that is reading, ear training, or general lack of knowledge. I am always happy to work on these things in a patient but challenging manner. While improvement is the goal, I know first hand that failure is an important and essential part of the learning process.

Chris is a New York City-based multi-instrumentalist. A passionate composer and improviser, he has performed as a leader and sideman throughout New York, Boston, Colorado and abroad over the past 15 years. Chris attended the Manhattan School of Music (MM ‘25) and the New England Conservatory of Music (BM ‘23). He has taught privately and within public schools over the past eight years, and loves to help students cultivate their passion for music and instrumental performance. Students can choose to focus entirely on their instrument (saxophone, clarinet, and flute), or can specifically study improvisation, jazz composition, music theory, and ear training. While primarily a jazz musician, Chris is trained in a wide variety of musics including classical, which he diligently studied on the clarinet; popular music and R&B; and world musics, including Brazilian (Choro/Bossa/Samba), Latin-American (Bomba/Timba/Rumba), and West-African styles (Agbekor/Gahu). Some of Chris's many accomplishments include being recognized as a YoungArts Jazz Performance winner for four years in a row; performing abroad in Europe with the inaugural NYO Jazz Band, receiving a Community Performances and Partnerships Ensemble Fellowship at New England Conservatory, and also receiving the George Whitefield Chadwick Medal of musical and academic performance. Chris emphasizes a teaching approach that prioritizes connecting with the student and engaging them in what they’re specifically interested in, while also covering the fundamentals essential to developing ones skills on their instrument or in their field of study. He offers lessons in person, primarily at students's personal residences, and also online via Zoom, Google Meet, or FaceTime (although in person is highly recommended).

Online saxophone, piano, and improvisation lessons with a practical, creative, and personalized approach. I'm a saxophonist specializing in jazz and modern music, with experience as a teacher and performing musician. I'll help you improve your technique, sound, ear training, sight-reading, harmony, and improvisation, always adapting the lessons to your level, tastes, and goals. Learn real music, enjoying the process and playing from day one.

Learn sax, clarinet, or flute. Ben uses an individualized practice plan for every lesson that caters to the students’ needs. Lessons cater to the student's needs. The curriculum includes the following array of skills: Instrumental technique, improvisation, composition, and repertoire building of both jazz and classical pieces. Many of Ben’s students have gone on to study at music schools. Some have even become professional musicians! Currently, all lessons are taught on "Zoom."

I teach the clarinet, flute and saxophone for more than 30 years and proudly can say that I helped to improve and gave a new professional path to the hundreds of students in US and overseas. I am holding a Master’s degree from St. Petersburg State Conservatory (Russia), where I studied clarinet and saxophone. St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where I picked up saxophone in addition to studying clarinet. Simultaneously, I worked as a principal clarinetist at the St.Peterburg Symphony Orchestra. Not long after, I won second place in the All-Union USSR Clarinet Competition. Upon graduating from the Conservatory, I worked as the principal clarinetist in Kiev’s State Opera House and soon after was offered a position as a clarinet and saxophone professor at my alma mater, Kiev State R.M. Gliere Higher College of Music. If you want to learn to play the clarinet, flute or saxophone - and more so if your daughter or son does - the most promising way is to find a good teacher and take lessons. Learning to play a musical instrument like the clarinet, flute or saxophone is more than an intellectual process, that you may manage by abstract learning. Very much alike when learning to play the instruments there are a lot of things (how to sit, hold the instrument, your embouchure, how to breathe and move relaxed, how to control a tone) to train simultaneously and these things ought to be checked. The beginning can be difficult, and you can do a lot of things really wrong (and get used to that). Especially for the first hours it is worth to have a good teacher. I am looking forward to teaching you music!