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I’ve spent time interacting with Charlie via 1 on 1 coaching as well as utilizing the Novu Jazz Academy and I have nothing but positive things to say.

Charlie is down to earth, easy to engage with, and was able to meet me at my present skill level in order to move me in the right direction on my musical journey. Our coaching sessions were super helpful- having a skilled player and educator provide instant feedback and guidance on how to improve my abilities is really invaluable and helped me to advance my playing.

Access to the Novu Jazz Academy has been beyond helpful as well- I still come back to the lesson videos and pdfs when I’m working on a new song to review my spread voicings and expand my chordal vocabulary.

All in all I would highly recommend Charlie to anyone looking to up their jazz piano game!

Charlie is extremely knowledgeable on the topic, which you would hope for any great mentor. But the thing that drew me to him in the first place was his understanding of the beginner perspective. Anytime you see a video of Charlie talking about a topic you may deem complex, he speaks in a way that doesn’t make you feel so bad for not having an understanding of it yet.

It’s the same way during 1-on-1 sessions. As a beginner myself, it is difficult. But he knows it’s difficult, because he went through it himself. The greatest compliment I could give Charlie isn’t that he’s a great mentor, or he cleared up a lot of confusion around phrasing language and which notes to accent. It’s that he actively makes an effort to put himself in your shoes. Wherever you are in your journey, he recalls himself in that position, and teaches you what he wishes he knew when he was at that point in learning jazz.

Additionally, he knows the emotional and mental toll while learning, practicing, and playing is much greater on a beginner than it is on someone who is very experienced. Simply, it’s because they haven’t experienced success yet, and the discipline hasn’t been established. He tries his absolute best to make sure you enjoy it, and learn things that you want to learn while guiding you on how you should learn it.

The Academy is the same deal. It is a little more streamlined, and he is speaking to a broader audience. But, he still speaks with an enthusiasm that makes you glad you clicked on the video to learn. As a beginner, I had to pause quite a bit and go through the trial and error of learning something new. You cannot simply watch a video and assume you can perform the task. You do have to sit down and play, which is how I think you should approach the videos.

Overall, Charlie has been a great mentor and created a foundation for me that will drive my curiosity to learn jazz for many days ahead. 10/10

I joined Novu Jazz Academy after trying Charlie's mini course, and it's been one of the best decisions I've made for my playing. Charlie was incredibly kind and responsive from the start, and he went out of his way to help me get access to the full academy. It's very rare these days to find someone who takes the time to help you like that. Charlie is genuine and a true class act, both as a person and as a teacher.

The course itself is excellent. Charlie's teaching style is intuitive and very well structured, and the pathway through the material feels natural, with each lesson building on the last. For me that's the biggest difference compared to endlessly scrolling YouTube for scattered, unstructured content that never really adds up. Here I always know what to work on next and why.

If you're serious about learning jazz piano and want a clear, effective path rather than random tips, I can't recommend Novu Jazz Academy and Charlie highly enough.

Charlie is a great teacher! He is very intentional about coming up with a plan for each of his students. He not only covers music theory, but also wants to make sure his students develop the rhythm and feel of jazz. He has a comprehensive understanding of the genre and does a super job imparting his knowledge to his students. He is readily available and very eager to help along the way with answering questions and providing feedback, which is tremendously helpful. I highly recommend Charlie!

Charlie was so responsive and easy to work with. His passion for the music shows and that’s what really makes his coaching great. He did a great job helping me work on the specific things I needed, and also brought clarity to what it is to play jazz.

Charlie is an exceptional teacher who explains concepts in a way that’s both clear and easy to understand, even over Zoom.

His teaching style is patient, encouraging, and highly practical, which has helped me make real progress and develop a much deeper understanding of jazz.

His online setup is also outstanding. The audio and video quality are excellent, and the technology he uses makes the lessons feel smooth, interactive, and almost like you’re in the same room.

I highly recommend Charlie to anyone looking for a knowledgeable, passionate, and professional jazz piano teacher.

Charlie is an awesome teacher! He has a gift for weeding out excess information. Charlie has a rare gift for weeding out the excess information. Rather than burying you in loads of fluff, he distills everything down into easy concepts that you can actually understand and apply to the keys immediately. The instruction is entirely tailored to my level. Charlie meets you exactly where you are, pinpointing your specific blind spots and building your confidence. His patience is unmatched; he understands that adult learners have distinct paces, and he never rushes the process or makes you feel self-conscious about a concept taking time to click.

For anyone balancing a demanding professional schedule, finding a program that accommodates a chaotic calendar without losing momentum is incredibly rare.

Definitely would recommend to anyone who is looking to learn jazz without being buried in fluff! Worth every penny!

All my lessons with Charlie were very productive, I always learned something . He identified my weaknesses super quickly and taught me how to improve. Everything is organized, he writes the homework and key points on a Google Document so I always knew what to study and what to prepare for next class. The lessons are recorded on zoom, I loved that, because if I didn’t remember something I could always watch the recording. The academy was also great, it compliments the lessons, it’s easy to use and it gives a lot of examples on how to apply what you learned. Charlie’s attitude is great, I always had a good time, and didn’t feel judged in case I was bad at something. He’s patient and explains everything super clear. I’m really glad and happy I found him.

I’ve played piano most of my life in country and rock bands, and even spent some time as a music major, but jazz was still something I hadn’t fully figured out. Working with Charlie changed that for me.

Charlie has a way of bringing you back to what really matters. Like a great coach, he helped me get back to the fundamentals and showed me how to build a true jazz sound. He also helped me recognize and break some bad habits I didn’t even realize were holding me back.

Our time together has been both enjoyable and incredibly worthwhile. I always walked away feeling like I had made real progress and knew exactly what to work on next.

I’m very grateful for Charlie’s guidance, and I’d recommend him to anyone who wants to grow as a jazz pianist.

If you’re serious about improving, Charlie is the real deal. Daniel Buffington

I’m a professional Film Music Composer, a “self-defense” piano player. I studied at Berklee College of Music many years ago...
Charlie has a unique combination of being a very refined musician and a fantastic teacher.
To find those attributes together is extremely rare.

I went through many teachers in the diverse disciplines I approached in my career.
Jazz piano was the newest adventure.

Charlie has been absolutely inspiring.
His method makes absolute sense.
He’s very patient, extremely organized and above all very generous.

Whatever your level, I highly recommend him!

Professional commitments make me pause the classes for a while.
I’ll be back!

121 coaching with Charlie is really helpful. He is really good in tackling your difficulties in playing and to reduce that in smallest units which are easier to solve. Also, the academy videos are very helpful and can provide a lot of answers to your questions about playing and chord voicings. overall it was an excellent experience and I hope I'll be able to repeat that one day.

I'm a full-time choir director, educator, arranger, composer, author, bandleader and general musician. I live in London, UK. I'm 55 years old, and I've been playing the piano since I was 7. I'm really comfortable with improvising, playing with chords etc, but I've been playing "pseudo-jazz" for most of my life. I was comfortable with 9ths, 13ths etc, and a degree of soloing. People who didn't understand jazz would think I was great, but jazzers would recognise instantly that I wasn't really comfortable in the genre. I've had various jazz lessons over the years, but I could never seem to make the leap to understanding what I was missing. Recently I was feeling that needed to get out of this rut. I was browsing TikTok, as I'm young-at-heart, and one of Charlie's lessons popped up. I watched it and was instantly hooked, as it explained some concepts which I'd struggled with. I watched all his social media videos and decided to book some lessons at the end of 2025.

I can honestly say that the first lesson alone was worth the price of the full course! It bridged that missing link and I started to be able to understand how to progress in my playing. Charlie is a FANTASTIC teacher, patient, knowledgeable, approachable and very clear about his method. As a qualified and experienced educator myself, I really appreciated his flexible yet methodical approach to teaching. We videoed all the Zoom sessions, so I now have 10 brilliant bespoke resources to refer back to whenever I need to.

Also, his NOVU jazz academy is a brilliant resource - SO many lessons on everything you need to improve.

If you're in a rut with your playing, if you keep going back to Blues scale for everything, if you know that you're not sounding how you want to sound, but you don't know how to move on - Charlie is your man. There are many online resources with great players showing you how to play great licks, but this is so much more. It's a great player WHO IS ALSO A GREAT TEACHER, showing you a structured way to move forward in your playing. Don't look anywhere else - this is the next step to take!

So nice to have Charlie listen and take me to a next level in my jazz soloing . After our sessions - I have a clear direction and guidance to continue to make my lines smoother and phrasing to flow logically and effectively to reach the next level . For anyone seeking highest level private listening coaching and feedback - Charlie is your man ! The school is top tier.

Charlie does a very good job of teaching you the fundamentals of jazz playing. As someone who is very logical, his spread hand voicing systems and emphasis on rhythmic transformed my ability to play jazz piano. It also set me up to teach myself how to learn additional content on my own. Highly recommend!

I went through Charlie's 10-week coaching package, which includes the Novu Jazz Academy course videos. I entered into the course as a classically-trained pianist with little jazz experience. I left knowing methods to structure chord voicings, how to work on the getting a better jazz sound/feel, and with a clearer insight on how to walk down the jazz piano path. I had a great experience, but wish I had waited until a period of time that I had more time to spend practicing.

At the time of this review, the course included Jazz Piano Prep 1 & 2; Spread Voicings 1, 2A, 2B, & 2C (spread voicings is Charlie's term for chords voiced in both hands while playing the melody as the highest note). The course continues to update as Charlie finishes his videos. There's an online community section for students to post, and Charlie provides helpful responses to each comment. I found the course videos to have a clear and modern aesthetic, and supplemental PDFs were easy to read and informative. The Thinkific course platform was easy to navigate.

During coaching sessions, Charlie tracked everything we covered in an organized shared Google Doc, and he answered my questions thoroughly. Video calls had the same clean aesthetic as his course videos, and he was generous with making up any time that was lost from starting late, even staying late on some days when he wanted to explain further about a topic. He was great in catering each week's lesson to my specific needs. Charlie came to each lesson with positive energy and a genuine desire to help me along my educational journey.

I got in touch with Charlie through IG and then we ended up scheduling a Zoom call to talk about my goals and pricing for the coaching package. The value of the coaching is truly up to how much time you can spend honing your jazz craft. Charlie is responsive through WhatsApp for any questions and customized videos, so you can easily get the package's worth by practicing and communicating your struggles often (which I wish I had done more). If I could redo my experience, I would have chosen to purchase the video course first before doing the coaching at a more ideal season of my life.

Charlie’s lessons are very helpful and detailed. I learned how to improvise from him, and I really appreciate how hardworking and responsible he was while I was studying with him. Even when I was traveling in Korea, he still replied to my messages quickly and answered my questions very often! The intensive training during summer break with Charlie prepared me to audition for my university’s jazz club.

I get to learn everything from the basics to the most advanced in such a short time using the academy

If you are self taught jazz pianist looking to step their game up look 👏🏽 no 👏🏽 further 👏🏽.

As someone who began their piano journey in my 30’s I can say that I’ve made more progress in the 10 weeks I’ve spent studying with Charlie than I did in the 2 years I spent scouring the internet and youtube for lessons.

The system works. Having my own personal lesson plan, along with Charlies guidance AND the tutorials in Novu as a resource in between lessons I was able to hone in on specific areas of my playing and catapulted my progress.

Charlie is a great teacher and a master of his craft. And I wish I would’ve started sooner.

Charlie has a wealth of knowledge on how to best teach students of all skill levels in jazz. Not to mention he's also a great classical player and everything in between. I remember leaving every lesson feeling like wow I now have the tools to take my playing to the next level. It becomes only a matter of trusting the process and putting in that work everyday to actually get it done, but Charlie will help you every step of the way and it will be fun. I myself am a piano teacher, and had been trying lessons out with lots of other teachers before I tried both his 1 on 1 coaching and academy and no program or teacher really competes with his results. If you're ready to grind and put in the work he's the teacher you want.

I'm a gigging pianist who had reached an impasse in my jazz development before meeting Charlie. Charlie changed all that.

Over the years I had worked with several local jazz mentors, with limited results. I now needed to find someone who understood my plight and could really help me move forward.

Enter Charlie - a consummate professional educator and a superb jazz pianist. Charlie really helped me break down my barriers using his tried-and-true jazz method.

Access to the Novu Academy was the icing. It provided me with terrific tools and tutorials to get me working at my own pace between lessons. Invaluable.

Taken together, I was able to chart a truly results-oriented path towards developing my own jazz voice. Thank you Charlie !

Highly Recommended.