Ernie Jackson

Teaches at Wagner College Lifelong Learning

A guitarist since the age of 16, Ernie Jackson has been featured in Guitar Player, Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Downbeat, and many other magazine publications. He studied classical guitar under Ed Brown at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY where he received his BA in Music. He was then awarded a graduate scholarship to study classical guitar performance at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford CT with Richard Provost and Allan Spreistersbach. He furthered his studies in theory at the Manhattan School of Music under the guidance of David Starobin. His other teachers have been Sharon Isbin (Juilliard), and Benjamin Verdery (Yale). In 2015, Mr. Jackson received the Wagner College Alumni Fellow Award  for his distinguished career in music and education.

Prof. Jackson is the author of The Music of Justin Holland (the first African-American classical guitarist), The Everything Guitar Book, The Guitar Chord Composer, and co-author of The Only Guitar Book You’ll Ever Need. He is also the featured instructor in the guitar technique instructional video Fingerstyle Funk. In 1992, Mr. Jackson won the “Best Guitarist on Staten Island” competition and in 1995 won the “Young Artists Competition” at the College of Staten Island on classical guitar. In 2013,Mr. Jackson was asked by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to record the music of Justin Holland on an 1860s Staufer style Martin guitar for their video recording project of all the playable guitars in the collection.

He is also a sought after music education technology product specialist trainer with Sibelius, Avid, Korg Sound-Tree, M-Audio, Native Instruments.