Santini School of Guitar | Kids Out and About Rochester <

Santini School of Guitar

Address: 
658 Quaker Meeting House Rd
Honeoye Falls , NY , 14472
Phone: 585.329.5958
42° 56' 46.2768" N, 77° 34' 32.4732" W
Contact name: 
Steve Santini
Business/organization type: 
What our organization offers: 
Subjects / Categories: 
Ages for which our activities are most appropriate: 
Guitar lessons. Fingerstyle, jazz, classical, rock, blues, folk. Flexible lessons times to fit into your schedule

Steve Santini has an extensive background in guitar pedagogy and performance dating back to the 1960s. Originally self-taught on a $20 Harmony acoustic guitar that his brother received as a Christmas present, he acquired his first electric guitar ( a semi-hollow body Univox) a few years later in Washington D.C., along with a used Kay amplifier that had the unusual property of randomly shocking the player with ungrounded house voltage on the strings – seemingly in response to wrong notes. By the age of 16, he was studying classical guitar with George Yeatman, a well-known associate of Aaron Shearer and Sophocles Papas, who had also previously had a professional career performing in swing bands of the 40s and 50s. Santini soon moved to the west coast, where, after a few years of playing an eclectic mixture of classical, original, folk, rock, and country music in bars and roadhouses, he eventually settled in southern California and completed Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in guitar performance. During this period he performed in various contemporary music ensembles in the greater Los Angeles area as well as throughout California, often with far more experienced professional musicians and composer/conductors (such as William Kraft of the Los Angeles Philharmonic). His performing experience at this time also included music theater, jazz gigs (both small combo and big band), solo guitar recitals, and guitar and flute casuals. He served on the studio faculty at the music department of Cal State Long Beach and also taught in their Saturday Conservatory program for children, interrupted for a while with doctoral studies in guitar at the University of Arizona. Now residing in the Rochester area, Santini teaches guitar in his private studio to students of varying ages from 8 to adult. He spent a few years recently studying jazz guitar with Bob Sneider at the Eastman School and continues to perform locally in various jazz groups, occasionally giving classical recitals as well. His latest project currently in progress is a CD of predominantly original material, recorded entirely in the studio with musical partner keyboardist/recording artist/producer Greg Gilmore (Santini plays guitars and bass, Gilmore plays keyboards and drums). As far as his approach to guitar pedagogy, Santini prefers to start with a fairly disciplined classical regimen, typically based on Aaron Shearer’s method for classical guitar technique. This gives the student a good foundation in left and right hand technique and an introduction to performing solo repertoire. Once a certain level of proficiency has been reached (say by completing the first book of Shearer’s method), the student may then branch out into other styles if desired, whether on electric or acoustic guitar (though some prefer to continue their classical studies at this point). He has also experimented with teaching a blend of styles (e.g. classical, rock, and jazz) and techniques (e.g. fingerstyle and plectrum) all concurrently, but has found through experience that, while students may often seem to enjoy this, a more linear scaled approach typically produces better results over time – at least for the first year. In fact, even at the world class level, there are very few, if any, examples of performers who exhibit the same level of mastery in widely divergent styles such as classical and jazz. The best musicians travel a path covering a broad range of expression and compositional ideas which, though cumulative in some ways, necessarily leaves some things behind while new concepts, harmonies, techniques, even other instruments are being explored or invented. You can’t do it all at once.

Music, Guitar