Basic Information

I was born in Traverse City, Michigan in the summer of 1987.  However, I grew up in Bourbonnais, Illinois.  I then did my undergraduate studies at Conerstone University in Grand Rapids, MI where I met my wife, Liz.  I have also recently completed a Master’s degree in music composition at Michigan State University and still reside in the West/Central Michigan area.

My life Story (Abridged Version)

Music has been a part of my home ever since I was born, but not necessarily as a serious topic of study. Both of my parents are formally trained: My mother is a fine mezzo-soprano and my father a tenor and guitarist. Being a pastor’s family, music naturally was a part of our lives, and my parents performed for our congregation on a regular basis. Because of this, I had been interested in music from a very young age. My earliest musical memories are of me sitting at the piano in the music room of our parsonage, making up short melodies using three notes at a time (white keys only) while asking my parents what they thought of them.

After attempting piano and disliking it in grade school, I started playing the clarinet in sixth grade. The drum set then demanded my interest in seventh grade, and saxophone in eighth grade. During these middle school years I played in as many settings as my band director would allow including symphonic band, jazz band, and wind ensemble. But I never practiced enough to be the best, but only enough to be the second best. I believe this was due to my slowly emerging passion for composition seeing as I was spending more time in thought about how sound worked so that I could reproduce the sounds that were in my head giving other people the ability hear them.

As I began high school, I became frustrated with being put on the instrument that the band needed rather than alto saxophone. Little did I know that playing with a different section of the band every year would help me more than anything else I did in high school: During my freshman year it occurred to me that music notation software probably existed, and I picked up a copy of Print Music! 2001 at the local music store. Less and less of my time was spent playing video games, practicing, and studying, and I would spend hours at a time in front of the computer writing music with my soon to be outdated software, writing small chamber works for my friends and I to play. We ended up performing three of my compositions for solo/ensemble competitions, and then my senior year my band director even had my group play during a band concert. These extremely encouraging events led me to pursue composition as a career since I knew that there was nothing else that I really wanted to do (There was and still is a passion for rock drumming, but that dream was stifled. Although, now it is being incorporated into my latest projects).