*Read in infomercial voice*
Are you stuck in your instrument and style, want to learn how to improvise/arrange/compose, and feel like after spending years on learning how to play, you don't really understand music?

(I've seen many people in Zurich who tell me variations of "I played piano for X amount of years but I don't remember anything. I just memorized stuff and was bored of playing classical so I stopped" but that would like to be able to actually play freely and understand music. This is mostly for you)

I am a 23.y.o student-researcher at eth from southamerica and have been playing piano for about 15 years (+drums, guitar and bass with lesser proficiency). I mostly did classical for the first half going to youth conservatory. While it was a great background for technique, it did not really make me thrilled to practice (I almost dropped piano altogether). I felt the theory I learned was also very arbitrary and not fundamental (like parallel fifths for those who know) and I was not "free" at my instrument (I could not play from ear, other genres or improvise and arrange). I felt like i could perform music quite well, but hated not understanding it (like memorizing formulas in high-school physics). Then I switched to jazz, and that completely changed the way I approached music.

As someone who prefers understanding stuff from basic first principles this way really fits me, and it might fit you too. This is not to say we will mostly play pre-WW2 swing or whatnot. Jazz is an amazing toolbox and theoretical framework to understand music in general. It allowed me to join projects from a Moroccan folk ensemble to an Afroperuvian Big Band with which we traveled to the US. Now I get to play and jam around zurich at Mehrspur (ZHdK jam) and Amboss Rampe, and go to jazz clubs and play and connect with people wherever I travel, whether it's rock, traditional music, hip/hop and more.

We'll go from how Sound harmonics give rise to the important intervals, the pentatonic, the major scale, the modes, and then symmetries and tonal transpositions (and how these lead to non-diatonic notes). We can learn to use your ears to identify melodic patterns, put them in different contexts both rhythmically and harmonically. Take some pop-songs and jazz-ing them up with harmonies and also approach new genres and attempting to understand these with the language you build from jazz. We won't be focusing on technique as much, nor reading from sheets, mostly charts and how to quickly draw them.

I don't believe in having people in perpetual lessons and wasting both of our times so I generally only do a couple of classes where we go deep into concepts and you do self-learning into the practical aspects on your own time (ofc feel free to write me with further questions/clarifications)

Ideally, you have a good background as an instrumentalist (any instrument in principle), but if you are also very enthusiastic about the theory, then it should also work. The classes will be 50 francs the hour, but the first time will be trial basis with 30 minutes where you sense the depth/approach and then you can choose whether we start with the hour. I'm always down to meeting people either way.

In any case, very thrilled to meet you and play together. Feel free to contact me at my email

Cheers :)

Gonzalo