Romario Avila

---

Romario grew up surrounded by music due to his family's appreciation of Norteño and rock & roll music. The appreciation of music eventually turned into becoming the multi-instrumentalist he's always wanted to be at an early age.

 Romario's first plunge into music was during high school, when his now studio partner began to write music together and cover their favorite tunes (primarily alternative/indie music). Upon entering College of Lake County, Romario has been mentored by Professor David Jennings of the music department who supplied Romario with the passion of pursuing music in composition and various teachings! Throughout his early studies, Romario and his studio partner have built their home studios from the ground up and continue to expand in their production quality. Romario has been playing the guitar, drums, bass, piano, and ukulele for 8 years now, but is primarily a guitar player and guitar instructor with an attraction to Jazz. What Romario loves most about music is the theory and composition side of it and would love to teach students the brilliance of them equally. 

Romario has been teaching for 4 years now: As a freelance private instructor, School of Rock in Libertyville as an instructor, working with organizations [like A Safe Place] to provide private lessons as music therapy, and a songwriting tutor for Lake Forest College. He's a graduate from the College of Lake County with an Associates of Arts and is currently studying at Lake Forest College for a BA in Music with a Minor in Music Education. 

At Lake Forest College, Romario began creating film scores for his portfolio by working alongside LFC's Professor Donald Meyer. Romario is currently a member of the LFC Jazz Ensemble as a guitarist and is also the Chair of the Music Student Advisory Committee. At Lake Forest College, Romario formed a jazz quartet where he and his group perform jazz standards at various venues in the Chicagoland area. Romario's plan after Lake Forest College is to pursue a graduate degree, primarily a program in film composing (Columbia College) or a PhD in Music/Musicology. As for Romario's current and future students, he will always strive for success with his students and will always be there to support their endeavors with their musical career/hobby. No matter what difficulty the students' aspirations are with music, Romario's goal as their instructor will be to guide and facilitate them towards their dreams.

"There's a handful of concerts I could choose as my favorite, but the concert I will always remember is my first one, which was seeing Jon Bellion at The Rave. Besides being about 15 feet away from the stage, I sprained my ankle right before the show started and toughed through the entire setlist with a sprained ankle! Although my ankle has never been the same, I still had a great time and still see this artist to this day. If not this, then it would be seeing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony."