I'm passionate about music and teaching for a few reasons. I've always had an interest in listening to all types of genres and understanding their inner workings. In my household growing up, I was exposed to classic rock, grunge, hip-hop, smooth jazz, doo-wop, classical, and musicals. As a teacher I thoroughly enjoy seeing a student grasp the knowledge I share with them. Sharing my perspective on why different types of music are compelling to the human spirit accounts for a lot. Catching the flame in your hands and self-identifying with the notion that a song can "make you feel something" plays an important role in being able to learn and develop the technical abilities needed to make your instrument sing. If a specific song or genre ignites excitement within your soul, IT IS WORTH EXPLORING.

 

 

I first got into music at age eight by way of classical piano lessons and continued until age sixteen. I began playing guitar when I was thirteen, mostly self-taught with a few lessons here and there and a ton of online guitar tablature - Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix were the holy musical trinity that made me thirst for guitar. I played guitar in my highschool's jazz band from sophomore year through senior year. I formed my first original music project right before I graduated college - an acoustic duo. Both the singer and I moved back to Houston and eventually turned the duo into a full band that played hard rock music. After I graduated from college I got back into piano through learning a few Pink Floyd songs and began listening to a handful of Herbie Hancock's funk jazz fusion records from the 70s. Those albums opened up a whole new universe to my mind of what music, rhythms, and melody could sound like. Along with the jazz fusion influence, I was exposed to more new music knowledge through my bandmates who were heavily influenced by pop-punk and post-hardcore music aesthetics. Shortly before I decided to leave Houston for Austin, I got my first electric bass guitar and learned/performed an 11-song cover set as a bassist with a new band lineup that included one bandmate from my own project.

 

 

After moving to Austin in the fall of 2011 I quickly turned into a bassist - I backed up a few different singer-songwriters in the new group of friends I had made. In 2013 my drummer from Houston moved out to Austin and we formed a new hard rock project called Those Damn Eyes, which is still active today. That same year I also started a second project called Tessitura, funk/jazzy-ballad/RnB oriented music, which is also still active today. Both of these bands have evolved a great deal over the past nine years. Since living in Austin I've spent enormous amounts of time recording demos of ideas that come to my mind. The exercise and consistent repetition of fleshing out an idea using digital software has been a tremendously helpful tool in expanding and fine-tuning the way I write/arrange musical thought. My first experience recording my own music in a professional studio was in January 2014 at Orb Studios. In 2018/2019 Those Damn Eyes took a break from the full band identity and I collaborated with a violinist to create five instrumental piano/string-quartet filmscore type pieces. Also in 2019 I scored three short films, one of them in the horror genre. Both Those Damn Eyes and Tessitura have released two new songs each this year, with more new music to come.