Teacher Profile: Carter Heitkamp

About Carter Heitkamp

Carter Heitkamp is a graduate of the University of Miami Frost School of Music with a Bachelor's of Arts in Media Scoring & Production and History with a minor in Music Composition, as well as a principle in jazz bass performance. From his university's rigorous courses in piano as well as his jazz bass principle, Carter is adept at teaching either instrument.

From large ensembles to jazz trios to session work, Carter has been a professional freelance performing bassist for the past five years, having performed at venues such as the Winter Wonderful Fundraising Gala at the JW Marriott Marquis, the Kayesa Center (Formerly Miami-Dade Arena), the One Thousand Museum, and the Wonder of the Seas Cruise ship.

During his time as an educator for the Donna E. Shalala MusicReach program at the University of Miami, which provides free music education to underserved communities in the Miami metropolitan community, Carter with a team of educators to provide middle and high school students with one-on-one instrumental lessons, small group instrumental lessons, large ensemble performance lessons, and college readiness lectures.

Carter's approach to teaching music is one of expression and interest. He believes that the music worth teaching is the music a student finds value in, even if it is not necessarily a part of a traditional repertoire. With this, Carter emphasizes the importance of broadening a student's musical horizons by introducing them to music that might not otherwise be familiar with, such that a student may not only improve as a performer, but as a musician with a greater understanding of the arts.