Chris plays and teaches guitar, surbahar, sitar and oud and has 15 years  experience as a teacher and performer.

   Chris is interested in teaching all ability and age levels. He believes that music should be joyful and accessible to everyone, and that, whilst learning an instrument requires dedicated time and energy, enjoyment should be a major focus right from the start.
   Creating a nurturing environment for students of all ages and abilities is important. Beginners are welcome, and Chris is particularly interested in working with people who have been playing for some time but feel that their playing is stale or become ‘stuck’.
  Lessons are aimed specifically at the individuals level of proficiency and confidence. Material is chosen in conjunction with the student and is highly flexible, rather than learning through a predetermined system of pieces and exercises.
   Though he is a capable music reader himself, Chris prefers to teach mainly without written notation, using simple written devices as a memory aid, but with the primary focus on listening and memorisation.
    For students with a desire to learn notation, Chris has found that a strong focus on aural skills from the beginning serves only to enhance ones ability to make sense of the written page.

short bio

   After studies in guitar and improvisation at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Gordon Institute, Chris went on to study oud with Christos Baltzidis (Greece) and Fouad Haraka (Lebanon), and the classical Dhrupad style of North India with the Gundecha Brothers (India),  as well as Pandit Pushpraj Koshti (India), Beenkar Asit Kumar Banerjee (India) and Debi Prasad Chatterjee (India). He has taught guitar and VCE jazz at the Trinity Grammar School in Melbourne since 1998, Geelong Grammar school (Corio) and the Warranwood Steiner school, and has been guest lecturer on North Indian Dhrupad at Monash University.
more details here.

   Chris also offers recording at very reasonable rates in his home studio, and teaching in music theory, composition and song-writing.

contact chris.

take a look at chris's recordings page
watch a movie of chris playing surbahar
chris's full bio