Thanks for visiting!
What do you love most about music?
Of all the arts, music has always found the most direct path to my soul. My favorite pieces convey no deliberate plot and conjure no images. Music fades into the past just as soon as it enters the present. Yet despite its abstract and ephemeral qualities, the emotional arcs of music have crystalline clarity and a profound sense of inevitably – unless it intentionally defies its own sense of inevitability. These contradictions are what I love most about music.
I experience this plenty while listening, but playing music is the act that brings this experience into its fullest fruition for me. I’ve played guitar, tuba, and piano, and have sung in choir. Each of these endeavors has conjured up some of those special and almost mystical musical experiences.
Every time I write, I strive to compose music that produces something of this effect in those it reaches. The audience I write for mirrors my own experience with music. I write first and foremost for the performers who will work hard to bring it to life, and then for concert attendees with diverse musical backgrounds and experiences, with the goal of reaching them all wherever they are in their own musical journey.
I don’t recall exactly how old I was when I first began playing music. I was young, but by no means was I the youngest. Probably, I was some age that is countable on two hands when I began playing guitar. Though the zenith of the grunge era had passed, those riffs found their way into my soul. I needed to play them for myself, and eventually write riffs of my own. I thought I was a rocker!
At an age countable on three hands, I picked up the tuba. “If my son wants to play music, he should probably learn to read music,” reasoned my mom. Not entirely certain of my own inspiration for joining band, I chose the tuba because it was big, which I thought was cool. Happily, band acquainted me with a whole new world of music. Holst’s First Suite in E-flat Major tapped into the same musical passion that grunge had. My creative endeavor on tuba? Multiphonic harmonizations of “Smoke on the Water”...
Finally, at an age countable on four hands, I started teaching myself the piano. The gradual exposure to the “new world of music” that my time in band provided me culminated in a complete enamoration with the great works of Western classical music. The harmonies and melodies of Brahms and Tchaikovsky seemed to be the highest expression musical art could achieve, and I was determined to experience it fully, and to learn how they put together their great pieces. And while I’m no concert pianist, the time spent at the instrument is my most consistently joyous musical activity. I love the merging of physical, intellectual, and spiritual engagement into a single meditative act.
Since then, my musical pursuits have been a fairly consistent rotation of studying – which I did at Western Washington University, Indiana University, and The Eastman School of Music – practicing piano, and composing; some of the results of which activity you can listen to on this site.
When I’m not working on music, I’m hanging out with my dog Pickles, training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or eating something wonderful.
Thanks for reading. While the above captures an authentic account of my musical experience and motivation for composing, it is admittedly short on the kinds of academic and professional activities bios usually contain. Should you be curious to know these details, the button below will open up my CV.