Detailed Information

Making music is the activity about which I have been most passionate throughout my life, and since January 2000, I have discovered a similar enthusiasm for teaching.  While I have taught music on a one–to–one basis at various times in my life, it has been from 2000 that I have had the most interest and commitment.  As outlined below, this is reflected in the training I have undertaken for the profession in recent years.

Biographical Info

I was born in Los Angeles and lived there and in New York City before moving to London in 1996.  While I played various instruments in my childhood and adolescence (piano the longest), in my teens I decided on drums.  As a drummer in my early twenties, I met and began many years of study with the jazz tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh.  Marsh was a peer and occasional performing colleague of the renowned bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and a contemporary of Parker’s, the pianist Lennie Tristano, of whom Warne was for a time also a student.  I stopped playing drums around 1980 and committed to the piano a few years later, continuing with Marsh until his death in 1987.

Since 2000, I have been working in London as a jazz pianist, teaching in a variety of contexts and as described above, gained a few teaching qualifications.  In addition to performing, composing and teaching, I have created aids for learning in music including extensive practical guidelines for self–led musical development (as yet unpublished).  To support myself prior to 2000, I had a mix of professional careers.  I first trained and worked for about ten years as a computer systems analyst, programmer and consultant.  Later, after achieving the highest certification in the US, I managed my own piano tuner-technician business for about five years.

I hope this has been helpful and encouraging.  If you would like to enquire about lessons, I would welcome your call (020 8983-0572).

Yours faithfully,

Claude Alexander

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Copyright © 2004 Claude Alexander – All rights reserved.