SageMusic/ Jason Sagebiel

Wisdom, music and a new approach to learning… all grew out of severe injuryfor this U.S. Marine/ Iraqi war veteran.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Hi everyone, I'm kt RHS SheriffFryer and this is my heart of Texas.
Buckle up for this one. Achallenging but in a matter of fact
sort of way life stories so farof Jason Sagabiel, a man who actually

(00:36):
defies definition, just as he continuallydefies the odds of success over adversity.
You know you're more than a phoenix. You're a cat with fifteen million lies.
I don't know how you just keeprising and rising challenges, You triumph
in so many incredible ways, andyet here it comes again, here comes

(00:59):
another. Basically, if I daresay it an explosion in your life that
you have to deal with, youseem to have a lot of equanimity and
how you deal with this well,I appreciate that. And if you could
just get the explosions to stop andbe a little happier. Jason Sagabil is
a talented musician, an educator,and entrepreneur running a thriving music school in

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person and online in San Antonio,Texas, internationally known with hundreds of students
around the world. Sage Music isnot your normal music school, nor is
the founder, Jason Sagabil, afifth generation Texan who developed his school first
in New York, an Iraqi warveteran, a marine who turned his serious

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brain injury from war into a newindustry of knowing and teaching how the brain
works. I've known your family,Jason, your parents for decades, certainly
aware of you as a little boy, and you're growing up in Houston and

(02:07):
going to school, and then yoursisters as well, and what a shock.
All three of the Sogabil kids endedup as Marines. I don't really
ever think it was part of thefamily culture to join the military. Well
it is now, perhaps it is, but yeah, there was always a

(02:28):
certain pride about the US and Americaand specifically Texas, and I think it
was just I don't know, Ican't exactly explain why it happened, but
it's just, you know, Ifelt like that door opened and I had
to walk through it. And Ithink it's the same for both my sisters
as well. Well. You werepart of the nine to eleven event in
many ways, I guess in someway. Yeah, I was actually so

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since my little sister and joined first. You know, I joined right after
she did, so we both enlistedin nineteen ninety nine. I had already
started college at that point, soI didn't go active duty. I joined
the reserves. I had a fullmusic scholarship, well that's actually half academic
half music scholarship to go to LoyalUniversity in New Orleans. And since it
wasn't a full scholarship, tuition wentup and my scholarships did not, so

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I needed to start working. Andmy platoon sergeant in the Marine Corps,
he was his regular job is hewas a security director over at the Department
of Energy, and so through him, I ended up going in training at
the Central Training Academy and became asecurity police officer for the Department of Energy,
where I was trained to do securityfor the new Go weapons programs and

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the Patrollum Reserves. And I wasactually at that training site which is right
next to the mountain where they starall the new warheads for the United States.
And I was there on nine toeleven. And I haven't seen lockdown
like I've seen that ever. Soyou know, after the attacks had happened
the site, lieutenant over there cameout and he asked us who was in
the reserves, and a couple ofus raised our hands, and he says

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he says bye bye. So Idon't know where you're going, but you
are going somewhere, and you knowhe was right, So you know,
a few months later, my unitgot activated and I spent the next couple
of years on active duty, bothtraining. I think we were originally slated
to go to Afghanistan, at leastthat's what they told us, So we
did a lot of mountain warfare trainingand then kind of at the last minute
they switched it up and put uson an airplane and flew us from twenty

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nine Palms into Kuwait and we werethere for the pretty much the opening festivities
of the war in two thousand andthree. Yeah, two thousand and three
is when you did your first andas it turned out, only tour in
Iraq. You were what four monthsinto it when the unfortunate things started happening.
Do you physically? Can you talkabout that? Yeah? I don't.

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The timeline is probably a little bitfuzzy. It's been more than twenty
years, which is it's hard tobelieve because I still think of myself as
twenty six. So anything that's twentyyears ago is is is somehow doesn't add
up? Right? Yeah, don't. I don't really see these things as
unfortunate any anymore. But my ScottSnybert team was sent to do overwatch for
a checkpoint on a MSR on amajor service road that was going south and

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there was an intel hit that theywere moving petton, which is a very
high explosive, you know, it'sthe same thing you find in blasting caps.
And apparently they were moving a lotof the step down down this road.
So they put a platoon or asquad or I forget exactly the size
of the unit. So either aplatoon or squad was on this road doing
a checkpoint trying to find these explosivesas they were coming down the road,

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and my team we found a buildingnot too far away to provide overwatch for
them in case, you know,something happened, and there was this you
know, the thing about Iraq thatI sounds strange is like there there wasn't
like an organized enemy after the afterthe Suddam regime fell. You know,
we would roll up in positions we'dfind like piles of uniforms and weapons because

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they really didn't want to resist oncethe central command had fallen, right,
But they are all these kind oflike local warlords, and they would do
crazy things like they would break intothe Iraqi's homes and steal gas tanks,
or not gas tanks, propane tanks, you know, because they use those
to cook because there's not much an'tthere aren't any trees to burn out there,
so everyone used propane. And sothese local warlords or gangs or whatever

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you want to call them would gointo people's homes, steal their propane and
take it to the market and sellit back to them. So there was
not great people. So not toolong before that particular mission we went on,
we'd already largely disarmed this this gang, which I think was good news
for us. So my team offour we got surrounded by hundreds and we

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basically got attacked with you know,rocks and sticks and things like that.
And during that ensuing fight, Iwas hitting the face with a brick which
ended up fracturing my skull, mycheekbone, and you know, I went
back to you know, my teamleers. Very smart, he got us
out of there. You know,the Iraqis didn't seem to be afraid of
guns, but they seemed to beafraid of gas, so he had us

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put on gas masks and we threwsmoke and that opened up a little hole
and we got out. So whenI got back to the got back to
the the bass we were on,I got checked out by the corman,
and the corman pressed on my face. He said, if it hurts behind,
you probably have fractures in your skulland you need to go to Germany.
And before he pressed on my face, my platoon sergeant, actually my

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platoon commander, is like, well, we've got this big raid coming up,
and my team was actually going togo out to try to get I
don't know if I say his nameright, but Itzik Ibrahim al Jerie.
So he was the king of spadesin that deck of cards. So he
was the highest ranking official outside ofthe Hussein family, and so we were
supposed to go grab this guy.So because of that corner pressed on my

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face, you know, all thebones behind my cheek hurt pretty bad,
and I said I was fine andkept operating. After that time, I
went through two more explosions. They'rekind of fun in a strange way,
you know. I don't know ifI don't know how to describe them,
but other than you know, beforethe war, I remember one of the
last things we did is we wentout to the beach in San Diego and

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I went swimming in the Pacific,and you know, with those big waves,
they just kind of toss you around. You're kind of helpless. I
mean, that's that's kind of whatthe explosions I went through were like,
especially that second one, which waswhich was much larger. But you know,
what they know about brain injuries isthat usually it's not one incident that
causes the brain injury. It's usuallythe second or third, Right, So

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the first one makes you a littlemore susceptible, and then the second or
third is what kind of really doesit. And I remember that third explosion.
I was in a air hangar andwe were already slated to go home,
so we were already being replaced bythe Ukrainians. We were doing our
battle handover. It was very,very surreal. I was. I was
in this air hangar and the there'scamouflage net hanging down the front of the

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air hanger, and the camouflage nettingjust pushed up against the ceiling like it
looked like a door, like itwas so stiff, and the camouflage net
just pushed up against the ceiling,and I remember I think of myself,
that's odd, you know, thatshouldn't be looking like that. And right
after that happened, I felt likethe beginning of the blast wave, and

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it was it was very surreal becausethere was first there was like sand,
and then there was like pebbles androcks, and then bigger things started coming,
and so it's like the debris thatwas coming was getting larger and larger.
And I think I was probably inthe worst position possible for that explosion
of all, because the front ofthe air hangar was open and the back
was closed, so I feel likeit just kind of like pressurized the whole
thing and it knocked me backwards andit's almost like it hit the backside of

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that wall and it kind of hitme going the other way, almost like
stood me back up. And thatone left me dizzy for days. So
if I had to guess, that'sprobably the incident that really really did it.
So I didn't really know I hada brain injury at that time,
like no one in the military andthe VA was really talking about brain injuries
during that point in the war,and it didn't really become like a thing,

(09:52):
let's say, until you know,many many years later. So yeah,
I think I finally got dugnosed witha brain injury in me think of
the year two thousand and nine,So six years after it happened, you
had every reason to be bitter,to be angry, to regret. But
I guess immediately you had to startdealing with the issues of your injuries that

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you weren't aware of at first,and yet you tackled it just almost the
same way that you would as amarine. Well, I would hope.
So, I mean it's I mean, your choices are I mean to sort
of like dwell on how much itsucks, or you just move forward,
you know, and you know,the energy I feel like the energy people

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can spend on being miserable or complainingabout something is the energy you could put
into improving or moving beyond your past. And you know, you have a
limited amount of energies, you mightas well put it where it's useful.
I mean, that's usually how Isee it, and usually how I operate.
So you had a medical discharge fromthe Marines, and they gave you
a certain amount of medical care,the VA or the Marine Corps. But

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it's never enough, is it.I don't know, yeah, probably never
enough. I know the VA ingeneral, like all the providers I've seen,
the VA have always been very They'vealways wanted to be helpful, they've
always seemed to care, and Ithink that's been pretty positive. But you
know when I went through when Ioriginally got into speech therapy because I was
having memory issues, Yeah, theintake. I mean it took months and

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months and months to actually see someonebecause they were so backlog because so many
guys were coming back with injuries.And once I finally saw the therapist,
you know, I only had fivesessions. That's all they would be able
to give me. And so Ihad my five sessions of speech therapy.
I had my five sessions at polytrauma, had a few sessions at neuropsychiatry.
And it was really a speech therapistwho kind of pointed me in the right

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direction. So she was like,hey, yeah, I can see you
want to get better. I cansee that you want to improve, and
I can only spend a limited amountof time with you. But she's like,
here's the research about how human beingslearn and function, and you know,
pointed me to the research and Istarted reading in research and through that
I just really became fascinated with thelearning process, which is how I ended
up in education. Okay, soI want to come back to that learning

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process. Let's go through point ABC. You had been a guitar player.
I mean, the iraqis built youan ood an Iraqi guitar because they were
so impressed with you. Was itjust natural to fall into music or was
it in your studies about how thebrain functions that you thought maybe music would
help you. Well, that's aninteresting question, so I think it it

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goes back actually to the first timethat I learned music as well. So
I was you know, I waslike thirteen. I got sick with this
very rare disease and I wasn't Ididn't think I was terribly sick. I
know my family and other people wereprobably a little more concerned than I was.
But I was sick for a longperiod of time. So this disease
lasts normally two weeks. I thinkthe longest reported case before me was like

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six or eight weeks. And Iwas sick for eighteen months. And because
of that, I ended up ata study at the National Institute of Health,
where I lived at the Children's Innand was a test subject for many,
many months, and just because Iwas sick for such a long period
of time, my parents wanted todo something to get my mind off of
being sick. And my sister wasstudying the Irish harp in her harp teacher's

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husband was a guitar teacher, andthere I was. I became a guitarist,
which was, yeah, it wasgood. And so I think during
that time, you know, musicbecame sort of like my my catharsis.
You know, it was just kindof a way to escape. And I
certainly believe there's a healing quality tomusic, and I think it was probably

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similar for me the second time,you know, when I was dealing with
those injuries, like I knew againbefore the diagnosis, I knew things were
not right. I just didn't knowwhat wasn't right. And so music for
me was not something I was tryingto do to, let's say, intentionally
heal myself or intentionally recover. Itwas just I think it was just part

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of like this general process of youknow, self expression, catharsis and just
kind of processing what I was goingthrough at the same time. I think,
you know, music is of allthe things I've done in my life,
music has actually probably been the hardest. You know, I've been I've
done commercial real estate, I've donethe military, and you know, music
can kind of push you in away that many other disciplines can't because you

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have the sort of spiritual component tomusic or emotional component to music. Then
you have like the very fine motorcontrol, you know, and having been
an athlete for many years, likethe sort of fine motor control you have
on stage is that requires a lotmore focused than the sort of gross motor
movements you'll be making for most sports. So there's you know, you've got
to push your memory, you've gotto have you know, top le of

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a concentration. So I think inmany ways it probably did help with my
recovery because it was you know,it pushes you in so many different ways
to use so many different parts ofyour kind of existence at the same time.
That is so also profound because you'retalking about emotion at the same time
you're talking about your brain, andyou're talking about control, and you're talking
about concentration. It's all is rightthere in the brain, ultimately, isn't

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it. Well, I think it'sjust human expression. I think that's really
what it comes down to, isit's it's human expression, and it's just,
yeah, it's a very kind ofall encompassing way to express oneself.
And I think it's it's really rathergreat for that reason. So I know
that you're a native of Texan ofmany generations and you end up in New

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York. How did that happen?That was life kicking me in that certain
direction. So after the war,I was working at the Ritz Carlton Hotel
company and they brought me back andI ended up taking the job there back
in New Orleans, and again Iwas in this weird place where things were
outright and I didn't know exactly whatthey were, and I kind of wanted

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to move on with my life.And so I was offered the position at
the Ritz Carlton in New York City, which I ended up declining, and
I ended up taking a job witha different company, and I didn't make
it than that other company. Theyended up letting me go, And I
think that's in part due to someof the injuries I was dealing with.
The reason I picked New York andthe reason I was looking at different jobs

(16:10):
in New York was that I haddecided to use my GI bill to go
back to school, not that Ihad a particular interest in school, but
it was also part of way justkind of support myself during that time,
because you get some stipend for livingand such, and you know, I
was trying to get myself back together, and so school it was. And
when I returned from the war,there's only two schools in the entire country

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that were still accepting applications, andthat was the University of North Texas in
Denton and Quney Queen's College up inNew York City. And so I applied,
and I already had already done Texas, so I had to kind of
think about that, and I waslike, well, I know Texas,
so let me give the big citya try. So I ended up going
to New York and I planned tobe there for my master's degree. And

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I guess New York in some waysas a black hole. It you know,
it kind of sucks you in,it's hard to get out of.
It's it's it's gravity. And soI was there for fifteen years up up
until the time of COVID when Ireturned to Texas. Okay, so there
you were at CuNi. In musicschool, you were learning, and then

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all of a sudden you ended upteaching. Yeah. So with the brain
injury, I had, you know, good days and bad days. I've
for years suffered with nearly debilitating migrainesas a sort of residual of the brain
injury. I also have a photosensitivity now, so fluorescent lights and bright
lights, but fluorescent lights in particular, I think it's just because the way

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they vibrate like make me like physicallynauseous. And I almost didn't. I
almost didn't make it through grad schoolbecause of just the photo sensitivity. Like
I'd sit in class with them myeyes closed and I couldn't couldn't open them
to look at anything because those fluorescentlights were just driving me crazy. For
me at that time, kind ofnormal employment wasn't possible. I mean I

(18:02):
could. I guess I could havesucked it up and found like a sort
of quote unquote normal job. Thething about teaching, when I started to
teach privately, I had the spaceto, you know, if I had
a bad day, if I washaving more symptoms that day, or you
know, I was also dealing withlike neuropathies and pareshesias, and I would
have all these kind of weird tremors, you know, It's like my body

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would kind of shake, kind ofthis weird neurological response. And so if
I was just having a bad day, I could just call my students and
say, hey, can we dotomorrow instead? And so it's almost like
that kind of flexibility in my work, you know, is what allowed me
to keep working. So I don'tknow how how effective I would have been
or employable I would have been duringthat time if I had a job that

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required me to be there in veryspecific fixed hours, right. I guess
kind of what happened as a resultis I'm always a skeptical fellow. You
know, when people tell me things, I'm going to I'm gonna take it
with a grain of salt. ThenI'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna analyze it
well or make sure that they're they'rebeing right before I accept what they're saying.
And so even when I was readingthe research that my speech therapist had

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pointed me to, I was skeptical. I was like, Okay, let's
see if this is true. Andso I would actually test these things on
my students so the strategies and thethings I'd read in the research, I
would try them on my students.And as I would test these things in
my students, I'm like, wellthat worked. And so once I saw
those things worked on my students,I would do them on myself and be
like, well that worked. Andyeah, And to me that was a

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very kind of enlightening experience because Ibecame I would say, I became very
angry through this process because I youknow, I went through you know,
grade school and middle school and highschool and university and a master's degree,
and no one ever taught me anythingabout learning. And I know that I
wasn't taught in a way that's kindof in line with the way people actually

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learn and function as kind of describedin the in the research. But yeah,
so anyway, I just became fascinatedfor the process, and I'm no
longer angry about it. I justrealized we need kind of systemic change when
it comes to education. And that'sthat's one of the things that I'm kind
of really passionate about. It isjust just trying to wagh trying to change
the way that people learn and helppeople learn in a much more effective and

(20:17):
efficient way. Can you tell mesomething specific? You said you tried a
different thing, So what did youtry? I mean, what is it
that makes your music pupil grasp itbetter than someone who goes to the more
traditional route. What is it that'sdifferent? Oh, there's there's many,
many things. And I wouldn't saythat it's just music. I mean the

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things that we're dealing with are justreally learning strategies in general. And you
know, we have some really amazingstories here at the music school, and
I'll get to your your your questiona second, is that you know,
using the kind of strategies that wereteaching students use we've had I know,
one of the more amazing stories we'vehad recently is we had a student with

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a speech impediment. She was neverable to speak clearly. And our piano
teacher came down and his name isIsaiah, and he came down and me.
He kind of shook me, andhe's like, I can die a
happy man. And I said,well, what do you mean. He's
like, I can die a happyman. And he was like so excited.
And so he had worked with astudent and using sort of these strategies

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which I'll describe he got her tospeak clearly for the first time ever.
You know, she had been inspeech therapy, she had been working on
this, and she had some sortof social anxiety about speaking because she was
always stuttering. And he got herto speak clearly for the first time and
she cried. And to me,I just find that kind of really incredible.
And that's just and that's again,that's just just helping people learn better

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and helping people get better control oftheir bodies and get better control of their
thoughts. And I guess if Icould summon up I mean, this is
you know, it's about doing thingswith intention, but it's also understanding you
know, what not to do andwhen to stop. So you know,
if you go and you look atsort of like the way that people are
taught to study or the way thatpeople are taught to practice music, you

(22:03):
know, you know, when Iwas doing my master's in music and actually
my undergraduate too, there's this sortof culture like hey, you've got to
find like four hours and sit downand like work, and you got to
put in like four hours every day, you know, same thing. It's
like you know at school, likeokay, you have like an hour long
science class. You've got an hourlong math class, and then you go
home. You're supposed to find atwo hour block to sit down and do

(22:23):
your homework. And what's interesting abouta lot of learning? And I mean
this is sort of my framing.It's like, you, there's only really
few things you can learn, right. You can you can form a memory,
you can form a habit, andyou can develop a skill. Each
of those has to be learned ina slightly different way. So one of
the first things I deal with is, like, okay, are you're trying

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to memorize something, You're trying tolike develop a habit, you're trying to
develop a skill, and you kindof approach each of those things differently,
right, because they're learned in aslightly different way. But what's similar about
all of them is that, likefrequency is much more important than duration.
So this idea that you need thislong block of time to learn something or
to practice is not true because youjust need to have a very focused amount

(23:07):
of practice. So even if youdo like five minutes learning anything, but
your focus and your attention is thereand you're doing it to the best of
your ability, and hopefully you knowaccurately what happens is your brain will sort
of start to habituate that. Theproblem, though, is if you try
to extend that period of time andyou start to lose focus, well,
then you start to do things inaccuratelyand you start to form bad habits.

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And so, you know, Ihear people hear I've heard debate among teachers.
They say, well, should Ihave my student, you know,
practices ten times or should I havethem practice at ten minutes? And the
answer is it's the wrong question.You shouldn't be thinking even that way.
You should be thinking of it morein a sort of metacognitive way, which
is you can only practice until yourconcentration breaks, because once your concentration breaks,

(23:51):
you're just wasting time and spinning yourwheels. And so getting people to
practice in short, frequent sessions isit's going to be much much more effective
than having someone practice for a longor a blocked period of time. And
the same thing would happen in school. You know, not that I say
that I'm going to ever revolutionize theschool system. Maybe maybe one day that

(24:14):
would be a lifetime goal, let'ssay, but you know, I got
a few years left, you know, having someone go to math class for
an hour and then science class foran hour. You know that sort of
blocked structure is not going to bethe best for learning. What would be
better would be to have two thirtyminute math classes per day and two thirty
minute science classes per day and havingstudents kind of switch and an alternate between

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them, and sort of the moreyou can kind of jump all these concepts
up, the harder it is goingto feel. Actually like the more the
more difficult it's going to feel inthe moment. But you know, most
of the research points to the conclusionsthat people sort of do that block practice
feel better about their practice. Andif you test people who do that sort
of block practice, like let's saythe day of or like within one week,

(24:56):
they often perform better. But ifyou look at three weeks out,
and you look at twelve weeks out, and you look at kind of long
term results, the people who kindof do things in this kind of you
would call this interleaving. But ifyou do this in the sort of jumbled
or interleaved fashion, you know,those people have much much much better long
term results. That is a lotof philosophy, and we're we've been talking

(25:18):
for almost half an hour, andI haven't really gotten into the whole point
of why I wanted to talk toyou, because it's so incredible how your
life has formed, but you havehad such incredible charge of the direction it
took. So let's talk about youwere in New York. You were teaching

(25:38):
students while you were a student yourselfmore or less, and when did the
music school idea? How did thatwalk walk into your life? It was
a way you could make money aliving, okay, and how many students
did you have before the COVID inNew York shut you down? So the
way the school started was as Iwas applying the sort of learning strategies to

(26:00):
myself and to my students, Istarted to get a number of referrals and
I just couldn't keep up with referrals. So it's not like I ever intended
to open a music school. It'sjust the referrals kept coming. I couldn't
keep up. So I hired myfriend Tarrow to help out, and so
Tarro became the first instructor at myschool, and you know, it just
kind of grew from there, andwe moved from Forest Hills and Queens to

(26:22):
Longland City in Queens and you know, we just kept growing and growing and
growing, and we opened up asecondary location in green Point in Brooklyn,
and I think right before COVID wewere seeing I think at our peak we
were seeing about eleven hundred students peryear. That's unbelievable. And this is
all guitar was his other other instruments, Oh, it's everything. So it

(26:44):
was guitar, piano, voice,violin, cello, saxophone, clarinet,
drumspace. It almost didn't think youcould imagine. I even had a few
ood students in there as well overthe over the years, but you weren't
teaching all these classes. How manyemployees did you have? You? And
so Tara was just one of theteachers there, and I think he was
no longer there at that time,but I think around that time we had

(27:07):
twenty twenty four, twenty four andplaes at the school. So somebody would
come to you and say, Idon't want to learn the guitar, I
want to learn the saxophone. Absolutely, we have someone to help them.
And you just kept growing when yougot request, that's correct, that's correct.
Well, so you were leasing spaceten by ten rooms or how did

(27:30):
that work? And then basically itwas COVID restrictions that made you have to
shut down. Yeah, that's correct. So we had kind of a hodgepodge
of units, and our landlord waspretty good to us, and so over
the years we kind of consolidated,and at our peak, we had three
contiguous office units on the second floorof the Longlancy Arts Center, and we

(27:51):
had two contiguous units on the firstfloor. And obviously, when COVID happened,
they said we were not essential,so we could not operate and we
had to take the whole business frombeing in person to online. And we
did it in thirty six hours,and I was so unhappy because I wanted
it done in twenty four Apparently thatwas really fast. Most of the other
folks I talked to said, youknow, it was like months for most

(28:14):
people to turn that around. Butyou know, we got into the online
market in about thirty six hours.But we also had a huge losses.
You know, I mean forty orfifty percent of our students were you had
lost their jobs. So we hada lot of students who had big aspirations,
like to sing or play on Broadway, and we've had some over the
years. We've had some really solidstudents. We've had, you know,

(28:34):
cast members of Saturay Night Live takelessons with us. We've had an Emmy
Award winner take lessons with us,and you know, most of the people
just kind of want to improve theirpractice and their learning. And so we
had a lot of adults who were, you know, pursuing music arts in
New York City, who had jobs, as you know, in restaurants or
in hotels, and obviously those businessesall got shut down. So once that

(28:56):
happened, you know, the governmentalso decided that our land was an essential
business, so we could still collectthe rent, and that was just not
a not a tenable situation, andso we hung on for about a year
with our lease and eventually they changedthe they changed the occupancy rules. So
we built these gorgeous space and wehad these soundproof practice rooms and each one

(29:18):
had individual climate control and it wasreally really kind of amazing. But then
once they changed the occupancy those roomsthat we had built, their ocupancy decreased
from two to one person. Andso at that point the school just became
unusable because we couldn't legally put ateacher and a student in the in the
same room. And so that's thepoint we walked away from our lease,
and we walked away from you know, the hundreds of thousands of dollars we'd

(29:41):
spent on building all that out.And at the same time, we had
a lot of interest in the onlinemarket. And the problem we had in
New York City was that nobody inOhio or Kansas, or Texas or Nevada
who called this could afford the NewYork City rates. And so we knew
that in order to kind of serviceyou know, the rest of the country,

(30:02):
we need to be in place thathad a lower cost of living.
So I gave my employees some parameters, and they did the research, and
they narrowed it down to ten cities, and then narrowed it down to three.
The three finalists for San Antonio,Greenville, South Carolina, and Colorado
Springs. And then for variety factors, they end up picking San Antonio.
So we loaded up trucks and drovethe school to San Antonio, bought a

(30:29):
landmark here right north of downtown,and so now we have an in person
school in San Antonio, and italso serves as the headquarters for our online
program. Because things, again arejust cost effect of here that we can
offer reasonable rates to the rest ofthe country. You're more than a phoenix,
You're a cat with fifteen million liwes. I don't know how. You

(30:49):
just keep rising and rising challenges,You triumph in so many incredible ways,
and yet here it comes again,here comes another. Basically, if I
dare say it an explosion in yourlife that you have to deal with,
you seem to have a lot ofequanimity and how you deal with this well,
I appreciate that. And if youcould just get the explosions to stop

(31:11):
and be a little happier, staywith us. We'll be right back.

(31:42):
Your instructors. How many different ages? And does it matter? My instructors
range from I would say mid twentiesto their sixties, and our students ranged
from about four years old to Ithink the oldest we've had is eighty seven
or eighty eight. And is itclassical music? Is it pop? Is

(32:06):
it rock? I mean, whatwhat do you teach everything? The You
know, we don't have a wedon't have a set curricula. Let's say
when someone comes in and wants tolearn music, you know, one of
the first things we do is weput them through like a sort of onboarding,
and we do three things in thatwe kind of figure out what their
preferences are. So we surveyed abouta thousand students over the years and figured

(32:29):
out that there's eight questions that everybodyanswers, but answers differently. So,
you know, some people want tobe pushed really hard. Some people are
just like looking for something light andfun to do. Some people, you
know, want a very social experiencein the lessons. They want to talk.
Other people want to get straight towork. Some people want to be
pros. Some people just want toescape from work or life or whatever it
is, and so we try tocustomize the lessons around those preferences. We

(32:51):
also do a big five personality assessment, so we kind of learn more about
what their tendencies are so we canapproach them better as students. And then
the most important thing I think wedo is we spend a lot of focused
time figuring out specifically what those goalsare for that particular student, and if
there's parents involved, we'll also collectyou know, goals whe the parents have,
you know, for the development oftheir child, and we really just

(33:12):
kind of build the lessons for eachstudent around you know their preferences, their
personality, and their specific goals.The kind of cool thing about using these
learning strategies just helping people learn betteris that it's kind of agnostic to the
style, and it's agnostic to theinstrument, and it's even agnostic to the
to the subject. So you know, whatever it is that the person wants
to learn. Yeah, so whateverthey want to learn, our job is

(33:35):
to help them achieve it. Andit's that simple. Have you had any
students who wanted to learn multiple instruments? Yeah? Well, I couldn't count
how many actually, but you know, students do voice and piano or voice
gentar, or they do trumpet andpiano, or they do saxophone and flute.
You know, there's a lot ofstudents who do multiple instruments. Read
in woodwinds. Isn't that interesting?Okay, So how many students do you

(33:59):
have now in person in class inSan Antonio only or do you have other
physical locations? So right now wehave San Antonio for in person classes,
and we actually have two temporary locationsin New York City, so we're partnering
with good friends of ours. Sothey were actually across the hall from us
in this building in New York City, the London City School of Ballet,

(34:21):
So we're actually subletting space from themfor in person classes in New York,
and we're also subletting from a studioup in Astoria. So at this point,
I don't know how many students we'reseeing per year right now, because
I haven't checked those numbers in abit, but I think we're a little
smaller than we were before COVID,But I think we're seeing at this point
around six hundred or so students peryear, and a lot of us just

(34:45):
been because of we had some constructionsdelays here in San Antonio getting the building
open, and had some delays findingnew spaces in New York. So we're
growing again and we're on track,I think, to kind of way exceed
what we've done before. How manyinstructors and these six hundred students, these
are on site physical students. It'snot the online or are you counting online

(35:07):
in there too? Oh, I'mcounting both. I'm splitting. It's hard
to you know, it's hard topull those numbers out out because we actually
have, for example, we've gotstudents in Europe and on Australia and so
are Australia student in San Antonio.She flew to New York to or sorry,
she flew to San Antonio to takelessons with us in person. And

(35:28):
so it's almost like the boundaries Ithink post COVID between in person and line
are they're no longer so clear.We have students in San Antonio who like
to come in person like once amonth, but then they two three of
their lessons online, and so yeah, to me, to me, it's
odd, right, We've got SanAntonio folks who are very close to the
school who prefer to take their lessonsonline. We've got people who have flown

(35:52):
to us from other states and othercountries to take lessons in person. And
I think this is just one ofthe ways the world has changed since COVID.
That people, it's almost like ahybrid. It's almost like a hybrid
program. Now. I was picturinga typical practice room with a one on
one, you know, with ateacher. But do you have each one

(36:14):
of these rooms outfitted with the computerscreen and ready to go, or do
you have a computer central? Howdo you work that out this whole big
online operation, especially you've got timechanges across all oh, that's uh,
that's cool. Yeah, so,uh yeah, we've we've invested a lot
of money in buying the proper equipment. So all of our teaching rooms have

(36:36):
two computer screens, they have multiplecameras, they have multiple microphones, and
we've got video switchers and we've gotaudio interfaces, and so the students online
can see, you know, theycan see like a top view of like
the keyboard pointing down. They cansee the instructor hole in their instrument.
They can also see, you know, the instructor's face. You know,
I almost see it like going tothe doctor, right, so when the

(36:57):
you know, when you go tothe doctor, the doctor takes a lot
of notes on kind where you're atand how you're progressing, and we do
it the same way. So overthe last years, I've also done the
h a lot of the development ofmyself. We also have another developer,
but we've built our own platforms,so we have our own online meeting room.
We have an app where teachers actuallylog lesson notes for the students and
anything the student needs to work on. Those are recorded in our system.

(37:21):
All the student goals are recorded,so everything's you know, also very very
digital, but we provide a lotof resources for the students through through our
applications. One of the big benefitsis all those lessons actually get recorded online
or in person, and students alsosee a lot of benefit because they can
kind of go back and you know, rewatch the video of their lesson and
see what the teacher's notes are andit serves as a really great reference for

(37:42):
them to. It really helps themget things right, you know. And
this is this is one of thethings about about music or especially singing,
But I would say all the instimentstoo. Is like you know, when
you make a sound or when yousing, you always you know, your
imagination always colors it a little bit. You always think you sound one way
and then you hear it from theother side. I was like, oh,
I sound really different, right,truly anyone who's ever been in broadcasts.

(38:06):
Yeah, So in one way it'ssobering, and on the other side,
it really gives you the ability tobe really clear about what you are
and what you sound like, andthen you can make a real plan to
grow and improve from there. Soyeah, I think those kind of lesson
recordings and nation to the teacher's notesand the goal setting all the things of
the system really really helped tie alltogether for the students. We think of

(38:28):
music as being such a creative sideof our nature. The way you've gone
about it is incredibly creative, butit's also from a very scientific side of
things. Right brain, left brain, all of that. I was stunned
when you told me about your orchestraof guitars. Let's go there. Tell
me how that came about. Youstill play the guitar, I assume I

(38:52):
do. I do play the guitar. I don't play as much as I
used to. You know, oneof my deficits with the brain injuries,
I had some loss of fine motorcontrol, especially on my my left side,
so it's always kind of slowed medown a little bit on the guitar
or the ood. But the grossmotor movements I would make in conducting were
a lot, a lot easier.So I got into conducting because I was
in the new music scene in NewYork and I would play a concert and

(39:16):
you know, the violin players wouldplay every song, the pianists would play
like six out of the eight songson the program, and I, as
a guitarist, would play one becausethe guitar is not so popular in classical
or in modern music, modern artmusic, I should say, And so
I do these gigs and everybody gotthe same flat fee. And someone would
say, hey, you know,because we had two rehearsals to get ready

(39:37):
for a concert that, but cansomeone conduct? And I'd like, they're
like, you're not playing anything,your turn, you conduct, and so
you know, my, my thefirst concert ever conducted was kind of like
that. I just did it byaccident because they needed help. And you
know, I was conducting the kindof hardest music that existed. So I
know I was conducting things like MiltonBabbitt or Wren or it's just you know,

(40:00):
it was very, very difficult music. And the New York City Classical
Guitar Society had decided they wanted tostart an orchestra, and so I threw
my name into the ring for this, and they ended up bringing me on.
So I was the founding director andconductor of the New York City Guitar
Orchestra. And we've just finished,We've just finished. Oh, I don't

(40:23):
know how many commissions. I thinkwe've done probably over twenty five world premieres.
We've actually commissioned all these works forthe Orchestra, and we just finished
the third album. We just recordedin February. It's already produced and mastered,
and we'll have a big triple albumrelease for the Orchestra in September of
this year. And I'm really reallyexcited about it. I'm really grateful that

(40:46):
I got to be a part aboutthis and conduct the band. So there
are so many amazing players in it, and just amazing composers as well,
and we had, you know,just really really inventive composers you maybe never
heard of. But we also hadyou know, Pat Irwin who was the
guitarist for the B fifty two's.We had Josh Eustace who was the guitarist

(41:07):
for nine Inch Nails and had hisown band called Telefon Tel Aviv, which
is very particular sort of music,but it's also amazing. We had the
Lutinus for the Metropolitan Opera wrote usa piece of music that's for a hand.
It's just amazing, amazing composers allaround. You know, some Grammy

(41:27):
and Emmy Award winners in there aswell, and it's just yeah, it's
an awesome project and people should lookfor that. In it'll be a fully
digital release in September for the NewYork City Guitar Orchestra. And this is
an entire orchestra of just guitars,that's correct, keeping rhythm everything, yeah,
everything, And yeah, the composersI think really did a great job
of handing lists in a very veryinventive way, and despite it all being

(41:52):
the same instrument, you hear somereally really great Yeah, just a lot
of imaginations so that you really geta lot of different textures and sounds and
timbers and colors that I didn't evenexpect. So it's really a lot of
variety on this album. All right, So tell me again how the actual
title? And it's been in existencefor how many years? I think our

(42:15):
first season was two thousand and ten, so twenty ten was our first season,
and so I don't know what yearare we in now that requires math,
So so about fourteen years? Aboutfourteen years, and it is called
the New York City Guitar Orchestra.Guitar Orchestra, how basic? Okay,

(42:35):
do you miss New York? Areyou happy to be back in Texas?
I know that your family is happy, and I certainly understand how it was
probably better for your growth for younot to stay here while you were reinventing
yourself. No, I did missTexas. There's a lot of great stuff
here. People are invested in communityand in their families and in the state

(42:59):
of Texas. There's a certain amountof pride here, which I really really
like a lot. Yeah, ofcourse there's things I miss about New York.
I don't miss the high prices,and I don't miss the hassle or
the hustle or the you know,or every time I go back to New
York and I smell it, I'mlike, oh, right, it smells
terrible here, you know. Thenyou land in Texas and it's like,

(43:20):
oh, I smell trees, andit's those things are very different. But
you know, if I had topick one thing, I missed New York
As, there was a certain densityand a certain a certain amount of kind
of progressiveness or pushed when it comesto creating new music. But I'm doing
my best to kind of do thathere in San Antonio as well. So
at the school, we actually builta concert stage and we're working on really

(43:44):
trying to kind of push the musicalscene in Texas forward. You have been
moving nothing but forward for years now, and I don't think that you're going
to stop anytime soon. So evenas you build out more within your physical
locations, where do you see thisdigital world taking you? And I'm going
to have to ask you the AIquestion too, but answer that when first,

(44:05):
if you would, where do yousee yourself going? Where is this
developing to? Because I can't believethat you just kind of do it haphazardly.
This doesn't sound to me like youare haphazard at all. I would
hope not to be a haphazard Imean, I certainly have my impulsiveness every
now and again. But you know, if I had my choice, I
would basically revolutionize the way that peoplelearn and develop and you know, long

(44:32):
term, like to me, like, yeah, we just kind of dealt
with this at our quarterly meeting.You know, in the same way that
Exxon is not an oil company,it's really an energy company. I think
that we're not a music school,We're an education company and in the future
kind of a you know, wereally push community. We really want to
build community and get people to interactand learn. And you know, in

(44:52):
the future, I see it's likeokay, well, you know we have
stage music, which is the musicschool part. But then we have like
a sort of maybe a community,and then we also have another branch which
does maybe it's like after school tutoring. Maybe we have another branch that does
martial arts or Olympic weightlifting or youknow, I can the possibility are endless,

(45:12):
you know, because whatever you canlearn, you can imagine, and
you know these kind of principles applyingto you. So I would love to
kind of build out into other subjectareas potentially even to kind of education really
large. So yeah, to me, it's about helping people learn, helping
people become the best versions of themselvesthat they can they can be, and
helping them become the best at anyparticular subject they want to learn, and

(45:36):
kind of support that in almost anysubject they want to do. I mean,
to me, that would be reallyreally meaningful. I love your indomitable
spirit. But now this growth patternand branching out into weightlifting and who knows
what else? Are you gonna belisted public on the stock exchange? I
mean, do you have a boardof directors? Do you see this becoming

(45:58):
like more than just to see butin incorporation or something, or is this
still privately owned by you? Sowe're we're still privately owned in LLC.
I've thought about franchising, but Idon't think that's the right approach. If
the right people showed up and wantedto help me build this, I would
be open to either one, youknow, going potentially public, but I

(46:20):
don't feel like that's the right one. I think I would rather have like
the right people investing in and keepingit at private because I think we have
You know, this is one ofthe problems of the world, right,
you know, like when you dealwith things like the stock exchange and you
deal with like things at large,you start to deal with averages, right,
you start to deal with kind ofpleasing the mass, kind of mass
appeal. And I think when itcomes to like education, especially what we're
doing, is that people don't knowwhat they're missing yet, you know,

(46:43):
so it's it's, yeah, I'mmore interested in doing the right thing than
being big and really helping people ina fundamental way. And I see this
all the time with nonprofits, andit's a lot to do with their structure.
You know, people have their heartsin the right places, want to
do right things, but you know, when you're trying to fundraise, you
end up like you need to touchthousand people, right, And a lot
of times there's pressure in nonprofits tolike go out and like, you know,

(47:06):
do one short class for a thousandpeople, rather than take ten people
and really invest in them heavily andmake a really really positive result. And
I would rather have that really substantialresult in a fewer number of people than
to have something that's just kind ofa surface level for you know, a
larger a larger audience. And Ithink that whatever structure we take, it
would need to be that can helppeople in a really fundamental way. So

(47:29):
yeah, I'm open to the possibilities, but I think it's just you know,
helping people grow and get better ina very fundamental ways is what the
mission is. In talking with Jasonsagabil I was struck by his ability to
think, to observe, to decide, to act, and time after time
in his life to adapt. Logicand creativity are equal partners in a spirit
that defies defeat in life purpose.He truly is the sage of sagemusic dot

(47:54):
co. You can access for yourselfagain at sagemusic dot co. Thank you
Jason for talking and for playing yourown compositions of the guitar and the iraqi

(48:17):
Ood for us. And thank youequally to creative producer Jacob Dantone, who
made music of his own in editingthis particular podcast while battling the deadly assault
of weather on our greater Houston homesand lives. Kindred spirits of my heart
of Texas. Till next time,I'm Sheriff Ryer.