Blind Jazz Teacher

In Florida, music teacher Matthew Weihmuller uses his disability as a teaching tool. Matthew is blind and teaches jazz saxophone at a Tampa performing arts conservatory. He is an accomplished musician and has taught advanced and basic jazz, as well as improvisation, and has previously featured on TV.

Matthew encourages his students to feel the music through their instruments.

During his classes, he turns the lights off, so that the sighted students experience what it’s like to be a blind musician.

He says “This encourages the students to listen to the music and forces them to use their other senses.”

As an educator with blindness, Matthew believes in turning any disadvantage into an advantage, an approach that some students say has changed the way they look at life.

Matthew hopes that he can inspire others who are dealing with disabilities, barriers, and challenges in the same way that he has, and says, “it’s everything for me, as an educator to hear someone say that you changed their life.”

photo by Rob-Harris Productions Inc.