Bob Shields is a highly esteemed guitarist whose mastery of jazz, rock and all the styles in between has taken him all over the world. But as a music educator, he might be even more special.

When he was my jazz harmony professor in college, he would always challenge the class to use cutting edge compositional techniques; these days, if I'm stuck in a rut with my musicianship, I'll go to him for insights that keep me inspired and focused for months; in his own journey, Bob has set his sights higher than the mathematics of musical composition or the fine-tuning of musical performances: he has completed his PhD focusing on the correlation between creativity and overall human wellbeing and he is currently writing a book on the same subject.