Peter Bernstein is an American jazz guitarist (peterbernsteinmusic.com). I really dig his playing, and I own his record of Monk's music.

Mr. Bernstein played a few tunes during the lecture. Then he talked about how he learns a standard, stressing how important it is to listen to the original recording or film of the tune, because everything is in there.

He also argued that transcription should not mean stealing and copying other musicians note for note.

I loved his advice: "use your ears every day." Luckily, I had heard this from other musicians before. It is so true: I believe the most important thing in music is listening. As I like to say, it is all about ear-playing.

Mr. Bernstein also talked about handling whatever comes up on the bandstand, and about not getting nervous.

Lessons learned:

• listen, listen, listen!
• be enthusiastic!
• avoid licks; instead, reinvent and reorganize the material within the pattern itself.
• when you are playing, most of the time you have no good reason to be nervous.