Artichoke Community Music Teachers

Galen Huckins

Music Bio

To me, learning how to approach music, how to look at playing and performing and how to rehearse musically is more important than learning it's syntax. Helping someone express themselves through music is one of the most rewarding feelings I ever get. I studied jazz and composition on the east coast and over the past 2 years I have taught ensemble and theory at the Jesus Castillo Conservatory in Guatemala where I also worked as the director of a jazz band. I recently moved to the northeast and started playing out and teaching here at Artichoke Music.

As many people do, I started playing piano before ever taking piano lessons, I loved to play and improvise and would hammer away for hours. Strangely it's taken me a long time to get back to that wonderful place, the expression of music is so frequently drown out by it's grammar of theory and technique in rigid formal learning. For awhile I came to think of the piano as more of a technical contraption, one you had to tap in just the right way to get an appropriate sound. But thankfully I studied with some amazing individuals and got connected with the joy of music-making again. Now, I feel much the same as I did then. technically, I have come a long ways from that time, but whenever I sit down to play, I remember that feeling of making music effortlessly. That's what was taught to me, and that's what I most want to share with my students.

I teach all ages and experience levels, provided that the student is self-motivated. If you're interested in studying but unsure, feel free to give me a call or drop by sometime and we could talk about music and what you want to be learning and see if we would work well together.

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