Music Lessons and Live Music in Newport

Music Lessons and Live Music in Newport, and what is different about it

Newport has the most consistent thing on my calendar. Every Thursday I play Sis' on Monmouth with Rick Kinman and Friends, from seven until ten. It has run long enough to be the honest answer to the question people ask before booking a musician, which is some version of what do you actually sound like. Come on a Thursday and find out, for the price of a drink.

A weekly residency changes how you play. You are not performing the same tight forty-five minutes you would at a festival - you are reading the room over three hours, week after week, in front of some of the same faces. It is the best possible practice for the part of a wedding reception that nobody plans for, which is the hour where the schedule has slipped and the band has to hold the room together while the photographer finishes.

Newport's event venues run from the Levee down to the riverfront, and a lot of them have the same characteristic: a good view and a difficult load-in. Worth asking me about early if you are booking a full band with horns, because the answer sometimes changes what size band makes sense.

For students, Newport is a few minutes from Covington and well inside the range I teach in person, and everything I teach - saxophone, flute, clarinet, theory, improvisation, composition and arranging - also works online if that is easier than driving across the bridge on a weeknight. Beginners and returning players are as welcome as competition students; the lesson starts from the music you want to play.

What Suits Arts does in Newport

Other areas I cover

Besides Newport, Suits Arts works in Cincinnati, Covington.