Jazz Trumpet Lessons

Are you a trumpet player who wants to learn how to play jazz? Do you want to learn how to improvise?

Jazz improvisation is not something that just anyone can teach you. It isn’t one of those subjects that you can learn from someone who can’t do it themselves. Jazz is a language and improvisation is a conversation. As such, the minimum you should expect from your teacher is that they can speak the language of jazz through genuine jazz improvisation.

Eddie Lewis isn’t only an experienced jazz performer. He has also been teaching jazz improvisation lessons for almost forty years. For  over thirty of those years Eddie has been a local Houston jazz trumpet teacher. He has perfected the art of teaching jazz improvisation while at the same time perfecting his craft as a jazz artist himself.

To that end, Eddie Lewis is one of Houston’s top jazz trumpet players and he is the perfect teacher to help you learn to speak the jazz language yourself.

Jazz Lesson Teacher

How do you teach something as poetic and personal as jazz improvisation? Playing jazz trumpet is not just a bunch of scales and arpeggios. When it’s done right, a jazz performance expresses the trumpet player’s deepest thoughts and emotions. When it’s done right, jazz trumpet players become increasingly more unique as they learn to express themselves through the idiom. When it’s done right, the trumpet students and their teachers grow together, each learning and sharing with the other.

Photo of Houston trumpeter, Eddie Lewis, with the Afrika Mkhize Big Band trumpet section in Grahamstown South Africa:

jazz trumpet lessons

This video shows Eddie Lewis sitting in with the Loud Jazz Band in San Antonio, Texas. They were playing Eddie’s original big band song titled “It’s Me”. 

Jazz Trumpet Lessons with Eddie

That’s precisely what Eddie Lewis is offering! If you decide to take jazz trumpet lessons with Eddie, he will help you to truly express yourself in the jazz idiom. Houston has plenty of wonderful trumpet teachers and plenty of great jazz trumpet players. He has the deepest respect for all of them. Most of them are his friends. But when you sign up for jazz trumpet lessons specifically with Eddie Lewis, you are beginning a journey that will unleash your ability to create your art on your trumpet.

Yes, you will still work on scales. You will still work on arpeggios and chord progressions. But in your jazz trumpet lessons with Eddie Lewis, we never lose sight of who YOU are and what you have to say. In fact, along with the scales and other technical studies, we will work on expressing yourself from the very first lesson. And it never stops. We never stop letting that be our primary focus in your lessons.

The following video was taken during one of Elijah’s jazz trumpet lessons with Mr. Lewis.
He was still a high school student in this video. He was a student at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts at the time. He is now majoring in music at William Patterson University.

Your Lesson, Your Teacher

There are two philosophies Eddie Has that greatly enhance your jazz trumpet lessons. The first is that he believes that the lessons should always help you move towards YOUR personal musical goals, not his. Eddie wants to help you find your artistic voice, to be able to express your genuine self. You cannot do that if you play exactly the way he does.

The second important philosophy is that it is his job to teach you how to reach those goals. It doesn’t help at all when a teacher just screams, “why won’t you practice?” When you don’t practice, Mr. Lewis sees it as an opportunity to practice with you. He will work with you for the time you have with him and help you learn the tools you need to practice more on your own. These are extremely powerful practice tools that most musicians don’t even know about. The best way to learn these practice techniques is to spend time actively practicing with Eddie in your lessons.

Limited Number of Students

Eddie used to teach too many students. For over ten years, he was teaching over seventy lessons per week. It wasn’t good. He could barely remember most of their names.

In contrast, today Mr. Lewis limits the number of students he teaches so he has the time and energy to give each student the proper attention, not only during the lesson, but also during the week between lessons.

This is very important!

There are a lot of trumpet teachers in Houston doing what Mr Lewis was doing in the 90’s. Some people refer to it as “cattle call” trumpet lessons. The idea is to load up on as many students as you can fit into your schedule so you make at least enough money to pay the bills. But in that scenario, the students come up short.

Consider this: Mr. Lewis has written hundreds of exercises, etudes and student level songs. Many of these are available at our online music store, Tiger Music – we sell them as “products”. But the truth is, Eddie wrote all of those educational materials for specific students with specific needs. He wrote them for students like YOU, people he met for lessons each week, people he spent time thinking about during the week, people for whom he found unique solutions for their unique musical situations.

You cannot teach that way, giving each student that much attention, when you are trying to cram as many lessons into a week as possible.

But when you sign up for lessons with Mr. Lewis, you are important to him. He cares about your musical objectives. He wants you to accomplish the musical tasks that YOU want to accomplish. And he devotes every available resource into helping you become a genuine, musically honest, jazz trumpet player.

Get Your First Jazz Trumpet Lesson Now!

Right now, we have a few openings in our schedule that we would like to fill.

We accept students of all ages and all skill levels. Elijah, the student in the above video, was in elementary school when he started lessons with Mr. Lewis. He went through most of our jazz materials before he graduated and now he will be making a living doing the things we taught him. In contrast, we have another student who began at about the same time as Elijah, John Nelson, who was an adult beginner when he started. John makes his living as a programmer and remains very busy. But his ability to express himself as a jazz trumpet player continues to grow with each lesson. So yes, we have a success rate with all ages and all skill levels.

So what are you waiting for?