Plies, Dennis

DENNIS PLIES has been a professor of music at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, for more than thirty-five years. He has taught aural skills and piano, directed jazz ensembles, and taught a popular humanities course. He has had a lifelong interest in the art of teaching, and has performed regularly as a jazz artist, having written his doctoral dissertation on the pedagogy of jazz improvisation. Dr. Plies defines himself with six words: "friend, teacher, musician, writer, thinker, improviser." He and his wife Barbara live in Portland near their four adult children.