Jazz Study

Name: Teaching
Start: 2021-03-14T11:00:00
Location: California Jazz Conservatory

Anton is an exceptional player & inspirational teacher... and a lot of fun! He is organized & prepared, and so well versed in so many aspects of jazz performance and education... What more could a student want in a teacher?! — Susan Muscarella, Director, The California Jazz Conservatory

Anton Schwartz possess the perfect blend of musicianship; a top-flight saxophonist, an inspired composer, and a professional with a keen sense of the music industry and the jazz community-at-large. His teaching combines these gifts into…

…a unique presentation of sophistication, clarity, and personality; before you know it you've got the keys in your pocket! — Joe Gilman, Musical Director, The Brubeck Institute

I've really enjoyed your approach in the weekly workout sessions. Your teaching style strikes me as a rare combination of clarity, curiosity, creativity, and practicality. — Michael Gold, saxophonist

Anton is a superb teacher. He listens to my playing and singles out specific areas for me to focus on, which has improved my improvisation dramatically. He is engaging & enthusiastic... — Terrigal Burn, pianist

Anton Schwartz, Jazz Educator

Anton is passionate about helping professional and recreational musicians overcome hurdles in their musical pursuits. He has taught extensively at the California Jazz Conservatory, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the Lafayette Summer Jazz Workshop and the the Brubeck Institute. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University and the Brubeck Summer Jazz Colony and has given clinics at dozens of jazz institutions, including the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, Seattle JazzED, KPLU School of Jazz, and the Bellevue Jazz Festival Rising Stars program. He also teaches privately in Seattle and Oakland.

Anton brings the precision of a scientist—he has degrees in Mathematics from Harvard and Artificial Intelligence from Stanford—and the soul of an artist. He is a highly accomplished performer and recording artist; see his biography for more information.

Here are the most recent postings on Anton Schwartz’s jazz blog:

To stay posted four times a year on Anton’s teaching activities, as well as pointers and thoughts about learning jazz, sign up for his jazz education email list .

Individual Lessons 75 minutes • $90

Anton teaches lessons out of his studios in Seattle, Washington and Oakland, California, as well as remotely via interactive video (see below). He works with intermediate and advanced students of diverse instruments who have an interest in some or all of the following:

Improvising fluidly over chord changes
Powerful expression through music
Internalizing advanced harmony
Fluency in the many idioms of jazz, plus funk & blues
Phrasing
Saxophone technique, including sound production, articulation, altissimo and inflections.
The physics of musical sound
Efficient practice methods for a busy lifestyle

Anton particularly loves working with musicians who have studied scales and chords but are frustrated in their efforts to use those devices to make great solos.

Individual Lessons (Video) 60 minutes • $75

Like in-studio lessons (above) but via two-way video using Zoom or Skype or FaceTime. Anton has been giving lessons this way to students across the country and around the world since 2016.

Combo Lessons 90 minutes • $120

Anton works with jazz combos at his studio, on either a one-time or a periodic basis. He listens to their playing, points out areas of strength and weakness, coaches them to improve the weak areas during the lesson and suggests ways for them to further develop on their own. He has worked with beginning to advanced groups since 1995, at the Jazzschool, The Brubeck Institute and the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and has taught entire courses and workshops on a great number of the components that go into successful ensemble playing.

Anton is an accomplished & effective clinician.

He gives workshops frequently at a variety of institutions.
Below are some of his upcoming teaching engagements.

Upcoming Events


Jan 17 Sunday	California Jazz Conservatory - ONLINE, via Zoom Clinic (Online) – open to all “Math for Jazz Music” Show More Info Time: 11:00am Price: $45 / ($60 day-of) All Ages Welcome Buy tickets. Venue web site: California Jazz Conservatory. 11am-1pm Pacific Time (2-4pm Eastern) LIVE, REAL-TIME, ONLINE WORKSHOP Modular Arithmetic. Mutually Prime. Rotational Symmetry. Have I lost you yet? Terms like these are foreign to most of us, but what they stand for are things that, as musicians, we unknowingly deal with all the time. Let’s get our geek on and learn some new ways of talking about harmony and rhythm… ways that we can put to powerful use in better understanding and internalizing the music we play. Prerequisites: familiarity with basic musical concepts such as chord types and the circle of fifths.
Feb 7 Sunday	California Jazz Conservatory - ONLINE, via Zoom Clinic (Online) – open to all “Improvising over The Girl From Ipanema” Show More Info Time: 11:00am Price: $45 / ($60 day-of) All Ages Welcome Buy tickets. Venue web site: California Jazz Conservatory. 11am-1pm Pacific Time (2-4pm Eastern) LIVE, REAL-TIME, ONLINE WORKSHOP Let’s look deeply at this often requested, widely beloved (and sometimes hated) jazz mega-standard. We’ll review how the “A” section makes easy sense, and see how the bridge makes impeccable sense as well—and is easy to play over—when you look at it through the right lenses. The clinician will offer lots of practical advice about how to improvise fluidly over the song and relate it to other pieces that don’t seem as challenging. Students improvise (optional but encouraged) and are critiqued, with recommendations given for a direct path to improvement.
Feb 28 Sunday	California Jazz Conservatory - ONLINE, via Zoom Clinic (Online) – open to all “Practicing Better” Show More Info Time: 11:00am Price: $45 / ($60 day-of) All Ages Welcome Buy tickets. Venue web site: California Jazz Conservatory. 11am-1pm Pacific Time (2-4pm Eastern) LIVE, REAL-TIME, ONLINE WORKSHOP Musical mastery requires a lot of time. So let’s not waste any more time practicing the wrong way. In recent years, psychological experiments on skill acquisition have given a lot of new results about how most efficiently to develop memories and skills that last… and some of the results are quite powerful and counterintuitive. In this workshop we explore a number of findings and their concrete application to how we should practice.
Mar 14 Sunday	California Jazz Conservatory - ONLINE, via Zoom Clinic (Online) – open to all “Jazz Scales” Show More Info Time: 11:00am Price: $65 / ($80 day-of) All Ages Welcome Buy tickets. Venue web site: California Jazz Conservatory. 11am-1pm Pacific Time (2-4pm Eastern) LIVE, REAL-TIME, ONLINE WORKSHOP The number of scales you’re expected to know as a jazz musician can feel overwhelming. This workshop gives the big picture view of how scales interrelate, and how you can think of them as a well organized palette, not just a long list to be memorized. We’ll discuss pentatonics, modes of the major and melodic minor, the diminished scale, bebop scales, blues scales… exploring them with regard to constructing lines, brightness/darkness, functional harmony and more. Prerequisites: Knowledge of seventh chords (major, minor, dominant, diminished) and major & minor scales.

Jazz Study

Anton Schwartz, Jazz Educator

Jazz Blog

Educational Mailings

Private Lessons

Individual Lessons

Individual Lessons
(Video)

Combo Lessons

Clinics & Workshops

Anton is an accomplished & effective clinician.

Upcoming Events

You may also browse a list of workshops Anton has offered in the past.

Jazz Tools

Jazz Study

Anton Schwartz, Jazz Educator

Individual Lessons

Individual Lessons(Video)

Combo Lessons

Anton is an accomplished & effective clinician.

Upcoming Events

You may also browse a list of workshops Anton has offered in the past.

ScaleMate!

RANDOM ROOTS!

Individual Lessons
(Video)