Nothing about my musical background has been conventional, and my road to formal composition was equally unlikely. For over a decade I worked as a touring performer, producer, and improviser with a 19th century cello hooked up to more electronics and amplification than your average Japanese noise punk band. I created vast sonic worlds with a single instrument, forming a great collision between my education as a classical cellist at Yale University with my extensive experience as an indie producer, playing lead guitar in touring rock bands.

Growing up as an only child on an isolated, off-grid farm in southern Illinois helped set this non-traditional path in motion as I looked to my instruments, guitar pedals, and the natural world around me as creative collaborators. Over the years, as I’ve performed in maximum security prisons, aboard sail boats for marine life awareness events, in international theaters, and in underserved public school band rooms, I have continually striven to create music that, though deeply personal, speaks to the audiences present in any of these rooms.

Now, as I study composition formally, I strive to craft a personal musical language that not only envelopes the sonic influences and personal narratives of my past, but fully and coherently expresses the emotions, questions, interests and concerns most pressing to myself and many members of my community and generation today. Speaking to themes ranging from environmental crisis to the mystical, from great sorrow to grave inequality, and from a generational sense of hopelessness to a sense of belonging and transcendence, my work aims to hold a mirror to our current American society, while ultimately offering solace through imagination and its potential for change.