I am not — and never considered myself — a “genius” musician. My path into jazz has been one of struggle, discovery, and perseverance. Over more than four decades of playing and investigating improvisation, I’ve devoted myself to building practical learning systems — first for myself, and then for students — designed to make real musical progress achievable and repeatable.

In the 1980s I studied at Berklee College of Music, where I was able to immerse myself deeply in jazz and improvisation. The experience was invaluable — but like many students, it took me years afterwards to find my own musical voice after being shaped by such a strong institutional environment. That long search for clarity and authenticity strongly influenced how I teach today.

In 2005, at age 39, I moved from the UK to Buenos Aires. A personal loss had made me reflect seriously on how short and fragile life is, and I realized I did not want to simply repeat the same patterns for the second half of my life. Starting over in a new country and language was far harder than expected. Learning Spanish from zero as an adult was humbling and, at times, deeply uncomfortable. It took months to form basic phrases and years before conversations felt natural.

Looking back, that experience became one of the best preparations possible for my work as a teacher. It showed me — from the inside — what adult learning really feels like: the confusion, the plateaus, the vulnerability, and the breakthroughs. Jazz learning follows many of the same patterns as language learning: both are vast, layered, and require a combination of listening, structure, repetition, and real-world use over time.

After several intense years in Buenos Aires, I moved with my family to La Rioja, a remote northern province of Argentina, in search of a quieter and more grounded life. Alongside running a small music school, I began writing and recording duets and became deeply engaged in refining and improving them. That process — composing, testing, adjusting — further shaped my systems-based approach to musical development.

In 2016, partly as a form of creative therapy and partly to share what I had learned, I started the Jazzduets YouTube channel. It grew into a global educational platform and catalog of focused jazz learning resources used by tens of thousands of musicians worldwide.

One thing experience has taught me is that no two students are the same. Some come from classical backgrounds and need help entering improvisation. Others come from rock or pop and want deeper harmonic understanding. Others are drawn to improvisation itself but feel overwhelmed by where to begin. My work is built around respecting those differences and offering structured, practical pathways rather than one-size-fits-all answers.

I am especially committed to connecting emotion with understanding in music education. Systems and structure matter — but they must ultimately serve expression, creativity, and personal voice. Progress should be challenging, but it should also be motivating and deeply rewarding.

Music, in the end, should remain something we play.

The eventual target for me is that Improvising should be as easy and as natural as speaking a language.