JEFFREY WEINBERGER — GUITAR & UKELELE
Jeffrey Weinberger teaches ukulele and guitar in his Maine studio, Belfast Guitar & Ukulele Workshop. Jeff studied music at Berklee College of Music and music education at the University of Maine (B.M. Summa Cum Laude). He is a Teaching Artist with the Maine Arts Commission. He is the director of Midcoast Ukes, a 20 plus member community ukulele group. In addition to teaching at Bay Chamber, he also teaches at the Sweetland School in Hope. His current focus has been helping seniors enrich their lives with ukulele and is currently writing a book especially for them. His most notable student is astronaut Scott Tingle who was in outer space with NASA on the International Space Station. Jeffrey has taught music for well over three decades and enjoys his life in a tiny, rural Midcoast Maine town with his wife, cats and gardens.
Learn more about JEFFREY’s teaching philosophy
DESCRIBE YOUR APPROACH TO TEACHING?
This has changed a lot over the years. Today, I am more inspired by the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy of being student centered. Fun, exploration, humor and intense focus are what I try to encourage every time I teach. Also, experience doing something is far more crucial than talking about it. You have to spend time with a skill or set of skills and there is no substitute for that.
I try to help students relax and play with ease while being fairly strict about what constitutes proper technique. I stress tone and expression, which for me are paramount. Simple and beautiful first, then maybe try to be dazzling! I encourage reading music and learning theory far more today than I did when I started teaching. My deep dive into the theory and philosophy of education was pretty impactful and greatly shaped my approach.
WHAT DREW YOU TO MUSIC?
I grew up with a dad who loved classical music and a mom who liked pop. He had well over a thousand audiophile classical LPs and listened to Boston’s great radio station, WGBH every day in the car. He played piano pretty well and sang. He liked to conduct along with John Williams and Seji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony on TV. My mom was a Barbra Streisand fan. She loved Louis Prima, Carole King, Peter, Paul and Mary, Broadway stuff, etc. and let my brothers and I listen to rock and pop music on the AM radio in the car.
These things helped form my musical awareness. Seeing musicians play on TV clinched it for me. Between The Monkees, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and Sonny and Cher, I was convinced that I wanted a guitar as soon as I could get my hands on one! The look and the sound of the instrument was and still is endlessly fascinating to me.