About our professors
Meet our expert instructors. We are ecited to answer any questions you might have about our courses. Feel free to contact us.
john burton (FOUNDER and INSTRUCTOR)
Johnny Burton was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. When he was 8, he taught himself to play piano, including the famous Für Elise, by Beethoven.
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During his senior year in high school, Johnny was employed as a piano instructor. He then moved to South Mississippi, where he studied piano performance at MGCCC and transferred to the University of South Alabama, where he studied Music Industry.
christopher forbes
(instructor, director of curriculum)
Chris Forbes began composing at the age of ten. By his late teens he had written several major works including a full blown piano concerto. A scholarship from Downbeat sent him to Berklee College of Music in Boston, dividing his time between jazz, classical and composition.
He studied at the Juilliard School with David Diamond. He has several choral commissions including a piece for the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington, Christ Church UCC, in SilverSpring, MD, and St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston. His musical, Road Rage was premiered by the In Series in DC.
His ballet The Sea Lion was commissioned by the Chicago Composers Forum and premiered by the Chernin Center for the Arts in Chicago. His Ballade for Bassoon and Chamber Orchestra was premiered by the Cannon Valley Orchestra in Northfield, MN.
In addition to composition, he is an accomplished jazz and improvising pianist with three recordings under the Unseen Rain Records imprint. He is also an educator of 30+ years and has written over 30 music theater pieces with the Brooklyn teen ensemble “Life Lines” Community Arts Project.
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Chris is also on Facebook.
johannes riedl
(instructor)
Johannes Riedl is a German film music composer and mixing engineer, with around 10 years of experience in digital audio production and mixing. Over the last 4 years he worked on over 12 visual media projects, including 6 short films, 1 documentary, 2 advertisements, and 1 trailer.
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He has attended master classes from A-List composers and producers like Trevor Morris, Anne-Kathrin Dern, Marc Jovani, Dennis Sands, Christian Heschl, Edwin Wendler, Pinar Toprak, and many more to further build on his skills and knowledge.
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Johannes' website: www.johannes-riedl.com
william may
(instructor)
The music of William A.R. May (1988) has been described as "Bold," "Exciting," written with "Attention to detail" & "Tonal clarity."
Over the years, this youthful native of Atlanta, Georgia has written music for a number of venues, including music festivals, recitals, competitions, workshops, and weddings. With a net viewership of over 1,000,000 listeners, his music continues to receive performances throughout the United States, and around the world.
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Learn more about William at his website.
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jeremy harbottle
(instructor)
Jeremy Harbottle has been a keen musician from an early age, attaining grade 8 in piano and cello aged 14 and winning local young musician awards, a piano performance diploma in 1997 and a scholarship to study cello with the Royal College of Music, alongside a chemistry degree in Imperial College London.
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Since then, he has been teaching cello, piano and singing privately and in 4 schools, has beeen principal cellist of numerous local orchestras, plays professionally in concerts and ensembles around the U.K, including many of the major cello concertos as the soloist.
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Jeremy is passionate about conducting and singing, and has been musical director of four choirs for over fifteen years as well as musical director and vocal coach for a youth musical theatre company.
UPamanyu kar
(instructor)
Upamanyu Kar (b. 1988) is a composer, educator and a music entrepreneur, who has received his musical education at Rabindra Bharati University in India, where he has obtained a Master of Arts (M. A.) in Western Classical Music. His areas of research and expertise include Orchestration, Traditional Music (Both Indian & Western), Rabindranath Tagore's Music ("Rabindra Sangeet") and the Music of South-East Asia.
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Upamanyu has been commissioned by the Pioneer High School Orchestras (Michigan, U.S.), the Indo-European Youth Orchestra (Hungary), the Kolkata Youth Orchestra (India) and the Calcutta Chamber Orchestra (India). He is also the Founder & Creative Director of the String Quartet Tagore and the West. He has been featured as a selected composer to be programmed by The Symphony Orchestra of India in 2022.
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His musical albums and notable concerts / productions include: Numerous Strings (Commissioned), Naborupe Rabindranath, I, Rabindranath & She (Commissioned) and The Royal Bengal Symphony (Commissioned).
