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Students good time, where were the musicians and chefs? They were working. So I’m really glad that my dad, especially, had the foresight to let me get that out of my system young. My dad’s mantra for it was, ‘If not now, when?’” Winikoff graduated from Florida Atlantic University summa cum laude in 2011 with an interdisciplinary degree—an amalgamation of arts and humanities in philosophy, history, art, and music. His minor was Commercial Music, which is the study of the music business, and a certificate in Judaic Studies. He moved to New York shortly after graduating to work for the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), the largest licenser for music publishers in the United States, founded in 1927 by the National Music Publishers Association. He had interned there between his junior and senior year. “HFA has a mentoring program,” Winikoff said. “I was lucky enough to be paired with one of the corporate counsel. He really helped me to narrow my focus and motivated me to go back to school for law.” The Boca Raton native hated the cold and wanted to be closer to his family. He had been a charter member and first president of the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association chapter at FAU and had met the organization’s national president, Serona Elton, a few times. Elton is also the chair of the Department of Music, Media, & Industry at the University of Miami Frost School of Music. Winikoff knew there was a dual degree program, “and so, it was Miami,” he said. “I knew that if I wanted to continue to grow in the legal and business side of
music, this was going to be the place for me.” Winikoff still harbors visions of music in his head, as well as in practice. To clear his head, it is rumored that he sometimes ducks into empty practice rooms and recital halls late at night for a therapeutic jam. He worships jazzman Bill Evans, “obviously a monster piano player” and remembers the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, the first live American rock album, changing his life: “the organ parts in there are SO good.” He may not be scraping by on the road anymore but “being on stage is the biggest rush and best feeling even still. I’ve not really been able to find anything that can counter or best it.” Yet. For now, he is happy enough bounding through law school in a black Iron Maiden t-shirt.
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world spun off its axis. His father passed away. “It was a tragic and heartbreaking event and I think people can choose to go one way or the other, and I decided to go up.” He had been lamely scraping along in community college for two years but made a commitment to excel. He would also meet a fellow sojourner who would cause Winikoff to do a reality check. “I was very friendly with a gifted pianist when I was at Palm Beach Community College. Instead of taking lessons at school, I would go over to his house and we’d hang out and drink coffee and chat for a while before getting down to playing,” Winikoff said. “One day he was working on his taxes and he had stacks on stacks of paper because he was an elementary school music teacher, an adjunct at the community college and the university, he played restaurant and bar gigs four nights a week, and he traveled. He had 1099s from maybe forty different sources and he is the best piano player I’ve ever heard and he has to piece all of it together to make a living. He is a better musician than I am, by far, and not just because he is older. If you hear other musicians talk, he is a musician’s musician. He is out of bounds; he is above and beyond when it comes to playing. But even people who are that talented are scraping by. “Some of my best friends came out of Berklee (College of Music in Boston) and are working day jobs while playing night gigs and weddings and they are some of the best musicians I’ve ever heard and that is how their lives are going to be forever,” Winikoff said. “I remember my parents telling me that when people are out for drinks and having a
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