Artist Interview Featuring Austin Byrd
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In this interview, Jonny sits down with pianist, composer and arranger Austin Byrd to explore jazz piano from many angles.
Packed with inspiring performances, unique insights, and practical exercises, students will find many takeaways to expand their playing possibilities. Austin clearly explains topics applicable to all skill levels. For the beginner students, he explains how to get started with improvisation and lead sheets. For the advanced students, he ventures into reharmonization techniques using tritone substitution, Coltrane changes, and the “backdoor” 2-5 progression.
Jonny and Austin leave no stone unturned in explaining the road to piano mastery.
View Austin’s annotated Quick Tip here to explore his 3 approaches to building jazz vocabulary.
A graduate of the University of North Texas, pianist, composer/arranger, and educator Austin Byrd has performed with Arturo Sandoval, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eric Marienthal, Francisco Torres, Marshall Gilkes, Tom Kubis, Ron Stout, Tierney Sutton, and many others.
He has also toured the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Austin currently teaches jazz piano at Mt. San Antonio College and can be heard performing around Los Angeles with the Kevin Hicks Quartet and other local artists.
Monthly Update (June 2025)
In June, we released 4 new Courses, 4 Quick Tips, 8 Smart Sheets, 11 Backing Tracks, and more!
Student Assessment (May 2025)
In this video, Daine reviewed all of your submissions from the month of May.
Live Q&A (June 25)
In this Live Q&A, Jonny will answer all of your music questions.
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