The purpose of this website is to introduce my classes to students.  It is my hope that the pages on this website will aid students in choosing the class, help them to be inspired about music and the arts and finally to be successful in their class endeavors.

“Sound is the source of all manifestation...the knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe" ( Hazrat Inayat Khan)  When I read Hazrat Khan’s book The Mysticism of Sound and Music, I was humbled.  Students who have taken my music courses know how saddened I am that for most modern people music is background entertainment for something else that is being done;  that the music business has turned music into recorded sound commodities, that music is wallpaper.  This surely is not the music and sound that Pir Khan writes about nor what I have experienced in my life with music.  So I have decided to approach my music classes with this degree of seriousness and reverence.  Music is a subject that has dominated my life and taken me on many, many interesting journeys.  Like music itself, the journeys are ever-changing.  As Nicholas Cook writes in his book, Music :  A Very Short Introduction:  People think through music, decide who they are through it, express themselves through it....  rather than being something apart, music is in the very midst of things.  In fact it is less a ‘something’ than a way of knowing the world, a way of being ourselves...

Although there is a structure to the classes each class is unique because I welcome what is musically and artistically alive in each group.  Therefore, I encourage you - welcome you - to explore the world of music and the arts.