Justin Perdue
Jazz Guitar
Teaching Artist Statement
Justin strives to empower students with a command of technique and a knowledge of music theory that allows for improvisation of the music they hear. By encouraging students to expand their listening, the harmonic structures of jazz standards and improvisational approaches drawn from everything from bebop to free jazz, Justin emphasizes combining this foundation in music theory and musicality with ear training and technical development, with the goal of improvisational fluency - “playing what you hear”.
Having been primarily self-taught since his undergrad studies, Justin’s teaching has drawn on this: to help students learn to teach themselves, and to share the musical and technical knowledge of his years of performance and ongoing study.
Justin tailors his teaching to the student, drawing inspiration from the student’s musical interests, focusing on technical development, musicality and theory that allow students to play and improvise what they’re hearing. Justin’s teaching is also inspired by his undergrad studies at Bennington College with Bill Dixon - whose emphasis on developing personalized (and potentially unorthodox) techniques to realize one’s own improvisational ideas left a lasting impression on the importance of fostering a student’s development of their own “voice” on the guitar.
Teaching Bio
Justin has taught guitar privately for 3 decades, in and around Bennington and Middlebury Vermont. He has also taught improvisation in ensemble settings and toured with the Middlebury College Dance Department. In addition to teaching intermediate and advanced guitar students at MCMC, he is also currently developing online lessons focused on advanced exercises for improvisation and jazz guitar.
Performance Bio
Justin has played guitar professionally since the late 1980′s, spanning genres from bebop to classical and free jazz to funk, appearing at venues ranging from NYC’s Knitting Factory and Vision Festival to local clubs & Middlebury’s Town Hall theater. Over the years, Justin has recorded and performed with Arthur Brooks, the So-Called Jazz Sextet, Jack Wright, Mogani, and leading the Justin Perdue Group. Currently, Justin is focused on recording in his home studio, tracking guitar and bass parts along with his work as multi-instrumentalist on drumset and percussion.