About

I grew up in the California Bay Area and started playing saxophone in middle school. One of the most important people in my development as a musician was my first teacher, Adam Michlin. I had only been playing for a short time when I told him I wanted music to be a central part of my life. He took me seriously. He sent me to study with his own teacher, Victor Morosco.

Adam stayed closely involved in my development throughout high school. He worked with me on improvisation, helped me record and prepare auditions, came to my concerts, and even gave me his chair in a working big band. I was still a teenager, suddenly rehearsing and gigging every week with adult musicians. The band had an enormous book, and constantly reading new, challenging music made me a much better sight-reader.

Adam was my mentor. He treated me like a young musician worth investing in, and he connected me with Victor, who built all of my technical foundation.

Getting to study with someone of Victor’s caliber at such a young age was one of the luckiest things that’s ever happened to me. He was an extraordinary player and teacher. He was incredibly good at hearing or seeing what was going wrong, figuring out the underlying problem, and finding a way to change it. Just sitting next to someone who could play at that level changed my sense of what the saxophone was.

I spent a lot of my twenties gigging and teaching. Then a neck injury led me to largely stop playing for about a decade. During that time I sort of became a nomad. I did a lot of adventuring, lived out of a tent for a few years, hiked the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, and spent a lot of time soul-searching. The injury never really went away, but over time I learned to live with it.

These days I’m mostly focused on being a dad. I play because I love doing it. I practice pretty much every day and I’m still learning. I teach a few students here and there, rehearse with a wind ensemble every week, and occasionally play in a saxophone quartet.