Paul Fonfara has been teaching at WBSM since 2006. We sat down with him recently to learn more. If you’d like to take lessons from Paul, please contact our office.
Paul Fonfara
What is it about WBSM that has kept you teaching here all these years?
I appreciate that the faculty are all performing musicians invested in the local musical community and really live the music that they teach. It’s great to be around dedicated musicians with a wealth of experience and knowledge. I try to soak as much up as I can and find myself in conversations with people around here long after we’re done with lessons. I teach at a few other places in town, and find that the culture around this school is like no other.
What do you like most about teaching?
It’s a pretty marvelous thing to witness when somebody gets the spark and you know they really dig what they are doing.
What is the biggest challenge about being a performing musician?
Making the hard decision as to what to focus my time on. There are so many styles and musical ideas that grab my attention, and I’d love to explore them all with full force, but there is only so much time in the day.
What’s the best piece of advice you can giving to aspiring students who would like to be a performing artists?
Do it because you love it and let that be its own reward. Expect to also do a lot of ground work that is not directly music making, but necessary to let music making happen.
What’s the best piece of advice you can give to aspiring students who would like to teach?
Be patient and look for long term rewards that take years to develop. It takes a long time, and much work to really get good at music, but because of that it feels so good when you do get it. Try to pass that mindset on to your students.
Finish this sentence: Most people don’t know that I really love…
Really bad acting in really bad movies that almost reach the point of being sublime
Bands/collaborations you are playing in:
Painted Saints, The Brass Messengers, Bookhouse, The spaghetti western string company. In the past when I lived in Denver I was with Devotchka, 16 horsepower/woven hand, the Denver gentlemen, Jim White , and have recorded with Bill Frissell and played with a number of Symphony Orchestras.
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Meet Paul Fonfara
Paul Fonfara has been teaching at WBSM since 2006. We sat down with him recently to learn more. If you’d like to take lessons from Paul, please contact our office.
Paul Fonfara
What is it about WBSM that has kept you teaching here all these years?
I appreciate that the faculty are all performing musicians invested in the local musical community and really live the music that they teach. It’s great to be around dedicated musicians with a wealth of experience and knowledge. I try to soak as much up as I can and find myself in conversations with people around here long after we’re done with lessons. I teach at a few other places in town, and find that the culture around this school is like no other.
What do you like most about teaching?
It’s a pretty marvelous thing to witness when somebody gets the spark and you know they really dig what they are doing.
What is the biggest challenge about being a performing musician?
Making the hard decision as to what to focus my time on. There are so many styles and musical ideas that grab my attention, and I’d love to explore them all with full force, but there is only so much time in the day.
What’s the best piece of advice you can giving to aspiring students who would like to be a performing artists?
Do it because you love it and let that be its own reward. Expect to also do a lot of ground work that is not directly music making, but necessary to let music making happen.
What’s the best piece of advice you can give to aspiring students who would like to teach?
Be patient and look for long term rewards that take years to develop. It takes a long time, and much work to really get good at music, but because of that it feels so good when you do get it. Try to pass that mindset on to your students.
Finish this sentence: Most people don’t know that I really love…
Really bad acting in really bad movies that almost reach the point of being sublime
Bands/collaborations you are playing in:
Painted Saints, The Brass Messengers, Bookhouse, The spaghetti western string company. In the past when I lived in Denver I was with Devotchka, 16 horsepower/woven hand, the Denver gentlemen, Jim White , and have recorded with Bill Frissell and played with a number of Symphony Orchestras.