Drum Teachers

After picking up the guitar at age 7, Joshua Piche soon became familiar with country, folk, as well as blues. Artists like B.B. king and Paul Butterfield introduced a world of improvisation and freedom that soon led josh to artist like Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. To further himself in these styles, Joshua studied for two years with Winnipeg guitar legend Murray Pulver (Doc Walker, The Crash Test Dummies) and also learned from bassist Bill Wallace. (The Guess Who) By the time Josh had graduated from highschool, he had been studying classical guitar under David Letkeman (Winnipeg Classical Guitar Society). In the fall of 2009, after graduating from The Brandon Unviversity School of Music’s classical guitar program, he moved to Toronto with only a guitar, a laptop, and a bag of clothes. Joshua now makes a living as a musician and a music educator in Toronto. He can be seen playing for various groups around the city and is the musical director for the New Orleans styled group "The Sugar Devils".

Zaynab Wilson is a drum teacher and composer in Toronto. Born into a musical family, Zaynab began playing and performing steel pan drums with her family around Montreal at age 5. It was while at a steel pan rehearsal with the family band that she had a sudden fascination with the workings of a simple, traditional calypso beat her father was playing on the drums and just had to figure it out herself. From there, Zaynab began to pursue drums throughout high school and CEGEP, also discovering her major influences in Max Roach, Brian Blade and her private drum lesson teacher from McGill, Dave Laing. In 2009, she made a move to Toronto to study in Humber’s Introduction to Commercial Jazz Certificate program and is currently studying drums and steel pan in the Bachelor of Applied Contemporary Music program with some of the amazing faculty. Zaynab has started making a mark around the Toronto music scene, playing with various bands, and is leading a soul band, on drums and vocals, called the Sunday Boys.

Reenie's musical adventures began with piano lessons at age 6. Two years later, Santa brought her an adult-sized acoustic guitar (twice her size) on which she learned some classical guitar. Santa is obviously not a musician. In middle school, Reenie discovered the drum kit and fell in love. She attended an arts-focused high school in Kitchener, ON, majoring in percussion and went on to study percussion and composition at the University of Victoria in BC, where her works were read by ensembles including the Victoria Symphony. Reenie has also been writing and performing popular styles of music, including pop, jazz/blues, rock, folk, etc, and is currently working on a solo pop/jazz project. Her teaching philosophy is based on lifelong enjoyment of music, that comes from developing a connection between what students are listening to and what they are able to do.