Episode #23: Jennifer Marotta

Oh, that makes me happy.

Thank you.

Well, it also helps when you have bright, brilliant students like you, who, you know, already smart when you came and studied.

So when you, because you teach, you have your own like private students as well as teaching at USC.

I do.

Is there like much difference from how you teach your private students versus how you teach students in like that more educational, like institutional

setting? I would say I kind of have a mix.

I have a lot of random students who are, you know, interested potentially in USC.

So I might just teach them one lesson.

I have a lot of local students because, you know, I have children who are in now the local band program.

So I'm getting to know some of them.

And so I like to teach some of their classmates and stuff.

I love teaching young students too.

It's something I don't want to stop doing.

So I always try and find a way to at least fit some younger private students in because it just makes me happy to see their excitement and their energy.

And it's just really, really infectious.

But I would say I do my best to where whoever I'm teaching, whether it's a kid, whether it's a college student or it's like an adult, because I have a few of those too, adult students who wanted to either pick it up or pick it up after taking time off.

I just try and meet them where they are and to know what their goals are and just help them toward what they want.

If an older adult student just wants to play for fun and wants to get into the local community big band, well, then I'm going to give them enough tools that they can feel like they can get around the horn comfortably and do this.

if I have a USC student who wants to do this for their job, I'm definitely going to push them a little bit more because I know how, how much, you know, work it takes and what you have to do.

But, you know, my, my favorite is when I have students that know what they want and they are self-motivated to do that.

So that makes it a little bit easier.

But I would say I, I sort of teach them all where they are.

And so, yes, I'm saying different things to all of them because I think they all have different goals and needs and, but I don't have a sort of method for little ones a method and I have certain things that I like to do with young kids who are starting you know how to set them up with their embouchure and breathing and in stuff that kind of sets them up with good habits from the beginning which I think is super important but yeah I sort of just cater each lesson to each student

yeah why not so interesting like starting the students off at such a young age, I feel like so many of us don't get a good start.