For saxophonist Matt Miller, there was never a doubt about a career path. Since high school and a teacher whose

The reviews are coming in for The Musician, including a rave from Sherri Daley at BookTrib. Here’s a preview: The

Most musicians have to do something more than perform to make a living. Many turn to teaching. Few have achieved more on both fronts than Jazz Trumpeter Dr. Gordon Vernick. 

When the day turns into night, and you’re well beyond my sight, I’ll think of you, I’ll think of you. I hope you will remember, even when you’re feeling blue, that it’s you I like, it’s you yourself I like, it’s you.

Most musicians have to do something more than perform to make a living. Many turn to teaching. Few have achieved more on both fronts than Atlanta-based Jazz Trumpeter Dr. Gordon Vernick.

I was on course for a career as a classical pianist, majoring in it in college. Then a teacher with unusual insight – Ruth MacDonald, a Ph.D. from Julliard, so you’d think she’d keep me focused on classical – started steering me toward jazz.

There’s no substitute for talent. You always have to work your ass off: learn the language and literature of jazz.

I was getting my degree in mathematics at the University of Florida and playing six nights a week at local bars for $15 a night. I wanted to play but was always too insecure to do it full-time so I took a job across the country teaching at a private school in Beverly Hills.

I sort of lied my way into my music career. As a guitar player I wasn’t competitive with the better players, and I didn’t want to spend my life playing tuxedo gigs. I had a friend who had a recording studio and we started writing jingles.

I wrote my first song when I was 15, about a boy of course, and there began my lifelong pursuit of becoming a songwriter. Since that first song, I have honed my craft at ASCAP conferences in LA, studied songwriting at Berklee School of Music and attended countless songwriting workshops from Denver to Nashville.

At ages 22 and 23, our band from college, Bockman’s Euphio, was doing so well we all quit our jobs and decided to go on tour. A couple years in, our manager called a meeting and told us to bring our parents – we thought, “This is going to be either really good or really bad.”

I prefer writing to playing. Don’t get the thrill from gigging anymore. It takes too much time and energy away from my writing. It’s R&B, like the old days, but with a little jazz flavor to it, and sometimes a touch of classical – progressive R&B.

After you’ve been playing enough years, you discover the difference between playing a song and experiencing a song. That was a big breakthrough for me. When I’m on stage or in the studio and everything’s right, in good voice and the guitar is like an extension of my body, that’s magical, almost spiritual.