Author: Mike Shaw

  • Music Is Religion.

    Especially if you’re playing it. Because as you play, you have to believe. Singers know that you have to sell the words of a song. You might be singing that song for the hundredth time—or the twentieth night in a row—but if you’re not selling the lyric, if you’re not believing what you’re singing, you’re…

  • The Professor and His Youth Jazz Orchestra

    As a professor of music at GSU and “Coordinator of Jazz,” jazz trumpeter Dr. Gordon Vernick develops young talent through a program he started in 2010, the Rialto Youth Jazz Orchestra (RYJO), and a middle-school outreach program, Rialto Jazz for Kids. “Each year we audition for the orchestra in August and take about 50 kids…