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Adolfo Mendonça has a long and diversified history of studying and teaching music. Currently, he works at Guarulhos Municipal Conservatory as a full-time instructor and teach private lessons.
The private lessons are offered not only to pianists, but to people of any age and level who wish to learn about several topics in music, such as jazz harmony, improvisation, arranging, composing, music production, Brazilian music, jazz, keyboard programming and, of course, piano. The topics are chosen by the student and instructor together.
MUSIC TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Adolfo has been teaching music for 20 years, most of these working with hundreds of private students in the city of Santos, Brazil. Today, he is a full-time instructor at Guarulhos Municipal Conservatory, where he teaches popular piano, classical piano, jazz piano, jazz ensemble, music theory and jazz improvisation.
He also is also regularly invited for masterclasses in important music schools and colleges in Brazil, such as Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP), Universidade de Campinas (Unicamp), Universidade Julio de Mesquisa (Unesp), Faculdade Santa Marcelina, Faculdade Souza Lima Berklee, Sao Paulo State School of Music (EMESP), EM&T and many others, in addition to the St. Petersburg College and Hillsborough College in the United States.
As a conservatory instructor, he is also the founder of “Jazz e Harmonia”, a course that has been promoting jazz improvisation and language teaching for several years in Brazil. While this course has been offered in the in-person style with a strong focus in ensemble performance and jazz improvisation, in 2020 a special online edition of the course has gathered brilliant students from some of the best universities in Brazil, professional musicians, music instructors and researchers from several areas in Brazil.
The 2020 edition has offered lessons that covered the history of jazz, jazz analysis and arranging and had several interviews with world class multi-awarded musicians from four different continents. More than this, the course has resulted in brilliant multimedia research projects that are now available on the internet.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
Adolfo is currently a PhD candidate at Arizona State University and his research interests cover intercultural teaching, comparative analysis between the learning outcomes from Brazilian and American music programs and the challenges of international students in the US. As a researcher, Adolfo is currently performing presentations in global conferences, including one at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and ISJAC (USA).
In the field of jazz, he holds a master’s degree from the University of South Florida
In the field of music education, he holds a bachelor’s from Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos
In the field of Brazilian music, he has studied at Sao Paulo State Music School (EMESP)
In the field of classical piano performance, he holds a technical degree from ETMD Ivanildo Rebouças
