One of the most valuable lessons I learned as a young student has stayed with me throughout by experiences as a student, a teacher, and a musician: According to my teacher, if we wanted to succeed as professional musicians, it wasn’t enough to simply, solely, play our instruments; each of us needed to become a four-leaf clover musician. This meant becoming a master of our craft in four major areas:
- Performing on an instrument
- Teaching
- Composing
- Arranging
My ultimate goal as a musician and educator is to finely “round out my clover”; finding the pristine balance through music juggling all of the aspects that I have described above. My past approaches with working with students to create their overall four-leaf musical clover would shape my philosophy that I would bring to every situation. My agenda would be to contribute to an overall musical program where students would be challenged by and welcomed into the complex, mysterious, often simple, and beautiful world of music.
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Ed Castro's Blog 