I was born in San Juan Puerto Rico. I started playing guitar at the age of 10 years old thrilled with the sounds of R&B of Ray Charles, James Brown, and the classical guitar of Andres Segovia who enticed my ears with his recordings. At 12 I was already learning the "essential Blues" licks or phrases from the Vinyl recordings of the late Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, & the great B.B. King. At 15 I studied classical guitar for about 3 years with a very talented guitar teacher named Daniel Morrison. After that I was already interested in jazz guitar and went on to work professionally in the recording studios for several years and at the same time playing, listening and learning jazz music on the side. I taught guitar at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music's Jazz Dept for the multi talented saxophonist, composer and educator Marco Pignataro, who I have been privileged to play with. I have worked with artists Jose Feliciano, saxophone great Sonny Fortune, the late flute legend Herbie Mann, The Drifters, Danny & The Groove, The Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra, Grammy award saxophonist David Sanchez, legendary jazz bassist Eddie Gomez, award winning composer and pianist Roger MacNaughton. I have also recorded with jazz flutist virtuoso Artie Webb for Atlantic records, the late great jazz pianist Paul Neves, keyboardist Mark Gray among many others. Currently I live in Michigan with my wife, direct the Alma College Jazz Band, teach guitar lessons and work as a guitarist doing local gigs with a bunch of fantastic local musicians! 
Carlos Melendez
I was born in San Juan Puerto Rico. I started playing guitar at the age of 10 years old thrilled with the sounds of R&B of Ray Charles, James Brown, and the classical guitar of Andres Segovia who enticed my ears with his recordings. At 12 I was already learning the "essential Blues" licks or phrases from the Vinyl recordings of the late Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, & the great B.B. King. At 15 I studied classical guitar for about 3 years with a very talented guitar teacher named Daniel Morrison. After that I was already interested in jazz guitar and went on to work professionally in the recording studios for several years and at the same time playing, listening and learning jazz music on the side. I taught guitar at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music's Jazz Dept for the multi talented saxophonist, composer and educator Marco Pignataro, who I have been privileged to play with. I have worked with artists Jose Feliciano, saxophone great Sonny Fortune, the late flute legend Herbie Mann, The Drifters, Danny & The Groove, The Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra, Grammy award saxophonist David Sanchez, legendary jazz bassist Eddie Gomez, award winning composer and pianist Roger MacNaughton. I have also recorded with jazz flutist virtuoso Artie Webb for Atlantic records, the late great jazz pianist Paul Neves, keyboardist Mark Gray among many others. Currently I live in Michigan with my wife, direct the Alma College Jazz Band, teach guitar lessons and work as a guitarist doing local gigs with a bunch of fantastic local musicians! Alma is one of only 100 colleges and universities to be named to the Templeton Honor Roll in the Templeton Guide: Colleges That Encourage Character Development.
Graduate Profile
Erik Janners
Graduation: 1994
Major: Music Performance
The most important thing Erik Janners learned during his time at Alma College was to care for each individual performer under his direction.
“No matter how large the band, orchestra or choir, each person in the group is still an individual with his or her own problems, successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses,” the 1994 graduate says. “The Alma music faculty got to know me, and all of us in the program, as individual people, and gave each of us what we needed personally to grow.”