From Berlin to Buenos Aires

Being born in a family with a mad love affair with music, and being raised in my mother’s record store represented a unique jumping board for my musical career. It provided me with a deep knowledge and organic understanding of music in general, and jazz in particular. 

I started playing music when I was around 18. Eventually, after my graduating as a sound engineer and playing, composing, and leading my own bands as a self-taught musician, I studied jazz guitar at the the Royal Music University in Brussels. At the age of 28, I moved to Berlin and started teaching in both music universities there – the HdK/UdK and the HfM Hanns Eisler. I taught guitarists there, as well as a whole lot of students majoring in other instruments. I was leading the Jazz Guitar Departments and also taught jazz history classes, many ensembles, and theory classes for over a decade. Later I taught guitar and ensembles at the ARTEZ Jazz University in Enschede, Holland for a year. I have been giving workshops and master-classes internationally, on numerous topics (guitar, styles of comping, rhythm section and interplay, ensembles, vocal jazz, big band, etc…), communicating my passion for this expansive music to the next generations of players. Of course I’ve always had private students as well.

Bottom line: I LOVE teaching, it is part of my D.N.A., and I want to share all I have learned (and keep learning) from all the masters I get to interact, perform and record with.