Meeting Willie and taking lessons pretty much revolutionized my music life — most importantly my practice time life. Firstly, Willie listened to where I wanted to go musically and wanted to understand what my goals were. My goals were to better improvise through functional harmony, to improve my saxophone technique (I came to the sax by way of clarinet), to be able to commit songs to memory, to build a personal repertoire and to be able to transcribe solos I loved from recordings. We worked together on these goals and I can say that Willie helped me immeasurably in all these areas. He really opened my ears to how melody and harmony work together and how this can help one remember a song. He gave me methods to double up my practice time by working arpeggios, scales and long tones using a song as my guide. We worked on fundamentals of saxophone embouchure and technique (like using side C which is something clarinets don’t have), as well as working on the sax overtone series. In the area of harmony and music theory, Willie showed me how cadences work through a song to move from one diatonic chord to another and he introduced the concept of “borrowing” from minor harmony. A particular eye opener was one lesson where he clarified for me how all the changes in a song relate to the overall song key.

While I have no regrets about my music career (of several decades), I do wish I had met a teacher like Willie when I was starting out, especially in my junior high and high school years. If you have a desire to express yourself better on clarinet, sax or flute, you need to spend some hours with Willie. He is not just a soulful sax player, he is a great teacher who will listen to you, help you with your basics, and help you with performance issues (we often tailored the lessons around my upcoming performance challenges). He will be honest with you about what you need to do without tearing you down, and he will encourage you to think positively about yourself when performances and progress does not seem to be meeting your own standards. So I now regularly play jazz gigs in a duet or trio setting “off the page” as well as continuing my symphony work on clarinet — all at a level I really did not think I would reach this time around in life. And I still seek out Willie’s counsel over music challenges both jazz and classical. Final words: You will need to practice (but it will be more enjoyable and productive working with Willie).

 

Willie Matheis is an amazing, talented musician. He inspires learning and his passion for music is contagious. He is able to individualize the needs of his students. He is friendly and has a great sense of humor. His patience and knowledge of music makes learning fun. He connects with his students and his love for teaching is evident in every lesson. We wholeheartedly recommend Willie as a music teacher