Since 2019, I have been the composition instructor at the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras, teaching a broad introduction of music composition to beginning and advanced level students at the high school level.
Contact me to inquire about private lessons.
Follow the journeys of some of my notable former students below!
T. Gotsch is an artist from Chicago, Illinois with a firm belief in the power of music to nourish, revitalize, and connect. With passions spanning double bass, composition, education, administration, and conducting, Gotsch strives to weave together complex human and natural stories, and ground music in its roots of song, dance, and bodies.
As a composer, Gotsch’s music has been praised as both colorful and deeply rooted in polyphonic traditions. They have particular interests in the natural world, religion, the arts, and counterpoint, and have recently written for orchestra, Sputter Box, chorus, and eight rocks. Gotsch has served as principal bass, archivist, president, and tour manager for the Brown University Orchestra, and in 2024 founded and conducted the Vivo Ensemble for Contemporary Music. As a bassist, Gotsch is equally at home in period and contemporary ensembles, orchestras, jazz combos and big bands, chamber groups, bluegrass bands, and solo contexts.
Gotsch is currently pursuing a Master of Music at the New England Conservatory, and graduated with an A.B. in Music (honors) and Geology-Biology from Brown University, where they also received the Madeira and Rostropovich awards for artistic excellence and service. Their primary teachers have included Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, Nancy Kidd, Mark Seto, Doug Bistrow, and Eric Malmquist.
Alexandra Mihailova is a Bulgarian-American composer and violinist based in Baltimore and Chicago. She currently studies film scoring at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Her music spans from concert works to small chamber ensembles, aiming to combine her love for classical music with a modern, cinematic twist. As a student, she continues to discover and evolve her compositional voice for the big screen.
In her spare time, she enjoys finding inspiration from nature and art, as well as baking her favorite sweet treats.
Jaime Garcia-Anoveros is a NYC / Chicago-based composer and violinist. He is the President and Co-Founder of the Deleuze New Music Collective (DNMC), and is also a founding member of the microtonal XENsemble in NYC. His music primarily explores microtonal harmonic structures, including extended just intonation, spectral analysis of non-musical sounds, and non-dodecaphonic equal divisions of the octave.
He studies composition with Marcos Balter and Georg F. Haas at Columbia University. Prior to this, he studied under Jessie Montgomery, Kevin James, Dr. Amanda Harberg, Dr. Ben Hjertmann, and Eric Malmquist.
His works have been performed by the PHACE ensemble, Bergamot quartet, Hypercube ensemble, musicians of the SoundSCAPE festival, violinist Che Buford, Yanqi Chen, musicians of the Peabody Conservatory, AMF Contemporary ensemble, AMF Festival Orchestra, violinist Yvonne Lam, ATLAS Quartet, Arneis Quartet, Interlochen Ensembles, the Manhattan Brass Quintet, pianist Yoko Hagino, musicians of the Civic Orchestra, pianist Christian Clark, CYSO Philharmonic Orchestra, Gaudete Brass Quintet, and the Fifth Wave Collective.
As a violinist, Jaime focuses on new music and avant-garde performance. He has commissioned and premiered over 20 works by living composers. Recent performances include a masterclass on Sciarrino’s 6 Capricci with Irvine Arditti, premieres by composers Joey O’Neill and Won Jong at Columbia University, premieres by Frazar Henry and Murphy Severtson at New Music on the Point, a premiere by Thomas Shorthouse, microtonal Bach reharmonizations by Marc Sabat at Opera America, an opening act for J-pop star Fujii Kaze at Lollapalooza Chicago, a set with shoegaze pioneers “Jesus and the Mary Chain” at the Francis Kite Club in Manhattan, and a set alongside Latin Jazz bandleader Axel Tosca at NYC’s Zinc Bar. He currently studies violin with Maja Cerar at Columbia University through the Music Performance Program (MPP). Previously, he studied violin with Corina Lobont at DePaul University.
Jaime is pursuing a music composition and philosophy dual-major at Columbia University in New York.
Aleksandra (Ola) Woźniak (b. 2005) is a composer and cellist based in Chicago and Baltimore whose work explores intersensory relationships, investigating the musical dimensions of speech and the intersections of sound and colour, with a particular emphasis on linguistic and dialectal elements. Her interests encompass both historical and contemporary forms of religious practice and their relationships with language, culture, ritual, and acoustic space. In her most recent projects, she explores ways of reinterpreting historical texts and liturgical structures through contemporary compositional techniques, bringing historical reflection into dialogue with current musical practices.
She is currently studying composition at the Peabody Conservatory with Du Yun and Felipe Lara, having previously studied with Oscar Bettison. Alongside her musical training, she studies art history at Johns Hopkins University. She has collaborated with ensembles and institutions including the Peabody Conductors’ Orchestra, Divertimento Ensemble, .abeceda Contemporary Ensemble, the Peabody Conservatory Saxophone Department, the Peabody Conservatory BFA Dance Department, the Ah Young Hong Studio, and the Lollapalooza Festival, and served as Composer-in-Residence at the Washington, DC DOC in 2025. These collaborations have enabled her to create interdisciplinary works while deepening her collaborative practice with performers.
Alongside her compositional work, she conducts research on liturgical music and was awarded the Tyler Center Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University for her research on the musical activities of the Polish Brethren in the Lesser Poland region. Her artistic project centered on interpretations of Jan Kochanowski’s epigrams received a Peabody Career Development Grant.