Primary Instrument: Trombone
Jazz Musician and Educator
Born in San Francisco, California, Jeff Galindo attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts on scholarship after high school. He also studied with Hal Crook, Jerry Bergonzi, and George Garzone with grants by the National Endowment of the Arts and began free-lancing in the Boston area. His experience includes tours of Europe with Phil Woods and Japan with Makoto Ozone, and tours with the Artie Shaw Orchestra. Jeff has performed with such notables as Chick Corea, Clark Terry, Joe Lovano, Buddy DeFranco, Slide Hampton, and Johnny Griffin. He has also performed with Gunther Schuller, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Bergonzi, Bobby Shew, The Boston Pops Orchestra, and Sam Butera among many others. In Boston, Jeff performs regularly with the Greg Hopkins Big Band and Nonet, The Galindo/Phaneuf Sextet (with which he has released a new cd “Locking Horns” in 1998 and won Boston Magazines “Best of Boston” for a jazz group in 1999), plus his double quartet with George Garzone. He is currently one of the top free-lancing trombonists in the Boston area.
Jeff is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music, teaching both trombone and jazz improvisation. He also has an extensive private teaching schedule. Jeff is in high demand as a guest artist and clinician at high schools and universities in Massachusetts, the United States, Canada, and Europe.
“One thing I teach every student is that music is a language. Like English or Spanish or Japanese, music tells a story and can make a person really feel different ways. Like a language, music has sentence structure, phrases, and paragraphs. I teach the students how to understand this and how to begin to interact and communicate as a band.
“Although I teach all the fundamentals of the music, I try to get the students beyond that. I teach students how to get this knowledge into their subconscious so they can really listen and play. I encourage students how to develop their own style by listening and being influenced by their favorite players and yet not just copying them.
“I want students to be inspired to grow in life as well as music and see how it's really the same thing. I teach the need for discipline and yet for looseness; to be able to learn something so well that one doesn't need to think about it, it's just there. I teach them that it's not what you play, it's how you play what you play.
“Berklee is a great school, with so much to offer. Again, music is a language, and if I were to try to learn Japanese, I would be best served by going to Japan. A student wanting to learn the language of music, in all it incarnations, will be best served by coming here to Berklee.”
Source: Jeff Galindo
