The greatest teachers I have had the privilege to apprentice, are the ones who knew when they were speaking technically in a way that fostered curiosity, trial and error, and insisted that I think independently with depth. They were adamant that I was critically aware of my own experiences of playing Music on the instrument.
They rarely gave me dogmatic technical solutions and they afforded me a severe amount of freedom that forced me to trust and develop my own awareness, instincts, and judgments. This was a massive gift, and a horrific indictment to take full and complete responsibility for all of my foolishness, shortcomings, liabilities, and ignorance.
I am grateful now, to have been so singularly challenged with this intense type of apprenticeship. It gave me the freedom to develop an autonomous, independent, and un-coerced encounter with history and repertoire to be fully formed in The Music.
Profound artifactual creation occurs within a time and space where the most serious and personal part of one’s ontology is manifested.
– JC Heisler