Phil Sargent, Beyond Rock and Jazz

Do you know that incredible feeling when you turn on the radio and your favorite song is on? That’s the feeling CCM guitar faculty Phil Sargent wants to inspire in his students. He says, “I don’t care if it’s Beyoncé or Metallica… I want [my students] to be psyched about whatever it is they are doing.” His biggest fear as a teacher would be to have a student leave a lesson less inspired to play than when they came.

Sargent was initially drawn to guitar when he was 12 years old. He began playing by ear, mostly the hard-rock and heavy metal of the mid-eighties, and his playing and passion for music took off from there. “I would practice all day long; I was obsessed,” says Sargent. He finds his inspiration from everything, not just music. Phil says inspiration “could be a really great book...or a Shostakovich string quartet, or a great guitar solo”. He thinks of inspiration as having two parts: “there’s the intellectual, and then there’s the emotional, heart-strings part of it.” These days, Sargent performs largely jazz-inspired improvisational music.

Another little-known side of Phil’s music studies and ongoing interest is Balkan music, mostly Bulgarian. “I initially got introduced to the music through the “downtown avant-garde” movement out of NYC. Artists like Masada, Brad Shepik, Chris Speed, Pachora. I was fascinated with the odd meters used in the music, so for years, I would study the music of Brad Shepik (a guitarist for famous Bulgarian musicians Yuri Yunakov and Ivo Papasov) and eventually studied with him down in NYC.” Last year, Sargent performed with Czech violinist/vocalist/composer Iva Bittova and the MIT Symphony Orchestra, where they performed a pair of pieces by Czech female composers, including Bittova’s Zvon. Sargent played with a jazz combo, performing “all classical guitar with the odd Balkan meters, a mix of modern jazz and classical movements. It was very interesting!”

In addition to teaching private guitar lessons, Sargent instructs CCM’s Rock Lab ensembles. “It’s really easy for me to be pumped teaching [Rock Lab],” he says, “I remember being that age and that first time playing with a drummer in a band...and that was it for me”. He loves the energy that his students bring when they experience playing in a band for the first time themselves. “The kids just light up,” he says. Sargent works with three different Rock Lab groups, and he decides what they’ll play by the kids’ interests. His students come up with a list of songs that they are interested in, and from there, Sargent picks songs and arrangements that will push his students to improve technically. He makes sure to strike a balance between being technically challenging and fun to play to have all the excitement and energy of playing what interests them and improve as musicians.

Phil has been a member of CCM’s faculty for five years now, and he’s found that he’s really impressed by the CCM community. “My students have all been fantastic, and I like how the parents are involved, too,” says Sargent. Parent involvement is a huge part of a student's success, especially for practicing at home, and Sargent has found that CCM’s parents are “really personable.” Along with teaching private guitar lessons and the Rock Lab, Sargent also teaches group ukulele classes for adults.