A Lifelong Teacher…

Erica embarked on her career as an educator at the age of sixteen when she began a teaching studio in her hometown of West Hartford, CT. What started with a few students ballooned to a studio of twenty eager and talented youngsters. Erica had found a calling, and a passion.

Her performing career has spanned everything from touring with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to performing in the pits of Broadway, in addition to countless studio albums and sharing the stage with luminaries from all walks of the entertainment world. But teaching has always been a common thread.

After graduating from the Juilliard School, Erica began a teaching artist position with Feel the Music, a nonprofit working with families of 9/11, specifically children who had lost a parent in the World Trade Center. While Erica was tasked with providing saxophone and piano lessons, she found that her most important job was to create a safe and fun space for the kids, many of whom needed a momentary escape from their grief and loss. 

Over the years Erica has been a guest lecturer at the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, Stanford University, New England Conservatory, UNC Greensboro, and countless high schools. In addition, Erica has been a mainstay educator for Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz program as an adjudicator and faculty member.

While teaching experienced students is one of her joys, Erica has a passion for working with beginning improvisers. In 2019 she self published “A Cool Approach to Jazz Theory”, an informational workbook that walks novice improvisers through the most basic of theoretic concepts, taking the mystery out of chord symbols, progressions, extensions and alterations. The book has been used as a curriculum for several schools in the US, Canada and Cuba. Erica hopes that this book can become a go-to resource for students and band directors alike, and to prove to young improvisers that soloing is not scary, and that jazz is not complicated.

That same year, as a part of her Montana-based nonprofit Groovetrail, she launched the Flathead Ellington Project, an all-star jazz ensemble of high school students from the Flathead area of Montana where she was residing at the time. Along with three dedicated local band directors and a slew of excited parents and supporters, Erica trained the band and on the music of the great Duke Ellington, provided them with opportunities to perform for the community, collaborated with students from Jazz at Lincoln Center, and brought in mentors like DeWitt Fleming Jr. and Summer Camargo. The project culminated in the students taking a trip to New York to perform at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. This program was the largest educational endeavor Erica has ever led, and was a massive and heartfelt undertaking. Sadly, the program did not repeat again the next year as the pandemic began to take hold.

In January of 2023 Erica relocated back to NYC with an opportunity to teach business and technology at the Manhattan School of Music. Backed with seven years of experience running her own for profit and non profit companies in Montana, Erica developed a curriculum aimed at providing basic financial and entrepreneurial literacy to budding music professionals. She’s now developed a series of courses on her website for musicians looking to improve their business chops, saxophonists wanting to get better on flute and more.

Currently Erica is on faculty at MSM, Jazz House Kids, and Carnegie Hall. 

You check out Erica’s book at jazztheoryiscool.com.