Brief Biographies

As a drummer and percussionist I’ve performed with notable musicians such as Cecil McBee, Claudio Roditi, Nilson Matta, Santi Debriano and Roni Ben-Hur, Joe Morris, Ali Boulo Santo Cissoko, Jason Palmer and Volker Goetze. I premiered Arturo O’Farrill’s Little Tiny Walls, theatre piece The Black Clown at the American Repertory Theatre, and played in Jason Moran’s STAGED installation with Cecil McBee and also performed chamber works by Jacob Druckman . Some performances include those around the world like at the Salzburg Jazz Festival (Austria), Jazz at Lincoln Center (NYC & Shanghai, China), Panama Jazz Festival, Birdland (NYC), The Whitney Museum (NYC), Kunming’s International Drum Festival (China) and The Kennedy Center (DC). London Jazz News described me accurately as "ferocious but subtle." I’d like to add that bringing beauty, joy, love, intensity, true communication and also a playful attitude to the stage are things that I hold dear to me.

As a performer, I trained to be versatile to perform in a variety of musical “genre” because I truly love so many different kinds of music. I grew up through the American jazz tradition studying, playing with and performing a lot of that music and listening for many years before I even picked up drumsticks for the first time. On this page you’ll see a picture of Jabali Billy Hart and I which is a small testament to how much this man means to me. If you’d like to know further about my touring, performing, music experience and education please contact me directly.

Composition is so important to me. I think everyone should compose, something whether it be music, words, visuals. It expands the concept of reality and it is so satisfying to create something absolutely new. Everyone has such creative beauty within. My focuses certainly shift by I do centre my methodology around creating stories with various substrata that combines freedom within a creative malleable structure that have different “dramatis personae” which is fancy for “developing dramatic characters that interact.” I develop things very differently and never really use one method or one way of creating anything. Creating new works is really my focus because I desire adding a spark, a flame, a storm of something new that can perhaps last as something that adds, morphs or enlightens culture. I love so much music so I certainly draw upon methodologies from the past (and the past could mean before 1400) and I approach them in fresh, unique ways. I blend myself into what I create, I love comedy, film, dance, literature, visual art, Mother Nature, dreams and, well anything and everything. Scoring films, arranging existing pieces and writing for various mixed ensembles are also part of my repertoire. Click here for a list of the pieces that I’ve written. Some have been professionally recorded and some are waiting for the perfect opportunity to be utilized and all were created because of pure enjoyment and exploration of ideas. In 2020 I won a commission from National Sawdust and won support from YoungArts and MASSMOCA/Assets For Artists for compositions yet to be released.