Don Byron is an experienced teacher who has led residencies at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Nevada Reno. From 2005 to 2009, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at the State University of New York Albany where he taught theory, saxophone, history, improvisation, and composition. In 2007/08, he also taught at MIT as a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor.

“Over the years, I have taught myself the inner workings of all kinds of music, much of it far from Jazz and Pop. My teaching approach incorporates my personal journey. Much of my own formal training attempted to coerce me into looking at all music through the lens of a single style. I have instead chosen to learn many things from many different people, places and styles. To accomplish this, I have studied harmony and composition, instrumental technique, and basic musicianship.

Much of the methodology I teach centers around the idea of understanding a single piece of music quite thoroughly: its bass and accompaniment figures, rhythmic phrasing, specific scalar and ornamental habits. I teach my students to understand as much as they can as quickly as possible through ear training, and encourage them to gather as much information about the music they love as they possibly can.”