Paul is a jazz-trained pianist, musical director, and educator who’s performed with top artists and now teaches real-world, creative music skills to adult learners in the Boston area.
2026 Chord Play Topics include how to improvise with chords freely and merge them into a song. During this session, there was a talkback, and participants were encouraged to share their suggestions for topics to be covered throughout the semester.
Chord Play will show you how to get the most music out of even the simplest chord progressions. You’ll learn how to take a basic two-chord loop and turn it into something rich, colorful, and full of movement. Step by step, we’ll explore different ways to “arrive” at a chord, how to break apart and re-build progressions, and how to combine the chords you already know with new ones borrowed from other keys for fresh, exciting sounds.
You’ll also discover how different chords create different moods—and how you can use those moods to spark your improvisation. By the end of the course, you’ll have a set of practical tools to make your playing more interesting, your arrangements more engaging, and your improvisations more expressive, all while deepening your understanding of harmony in a fun, hands-on way.
