Greg Giordano

What drives a musician? Playing an instrument is incredibly rewarding, but takes the hard work to get there. What makes a person spend the time to make music, rather than sitting around watching TV or something? That drive arises from passion. In the world of music, at all ages, from slight intrigue to complete obsession: it’s all passion (although I still don’t quite know how so many of my younger students know about “Smoke on the Water”). Part of my focus as a teacher at iSchool is to find each student’s passion and strike a chord that resonates. When you find that frequency the student develops the drive to create and seek the rewards that playing an instrument can offer.

As a teenager, I found that passion in progressive rock and heavy metal. When I would ask my guitar teacher to show me a song, not only would he show me how to play it, but he would explain to me the mechanics and theory behind the song. As a result, I gained the technical ability on guitar and the knowledge of the available tools in music. This made every song more than just a song: it was an avenue of possibility.

Through those possibilities and passions I wrote and recorded 3 CD’s, one with a band and two solo, and have now put together a band that performs regularly. Since I joined the iSchool faculty, I always felt the iBand program and philosophy were unique and exciting because they give students an opportunity for guidance in a practical band setting, a setting that is very familiar to me but one I’d had to stumble through on my own. To compliment this, I strive to find the passion in my students, as my teacher did, and that they can reap as satisfying a reward.

Turrigenous-band website