Education

My Background

I wrote a song recently that sums up what it felt like to grow up a bastard child in a Catholic community in a small town at a time when "Be All You Can Be" and "Just Do It" were the matras of the day.

2000-2007

University of Maryland, College Park

B.A. Jazz Music 2014
By the time my journey in New Mexico was over, I knew I wanted to study music and become a professional musician, but I didn't have the money and didn't want to go into more debt. So, I moved home to Annapolis, MD, did temp work, and started taking classes at UMD. Eventually, I started teaching piano lessons in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, Maryland, and was able to work and live on my own, while putting myself through school. ..... I've been living in and connecting to the music scene of DC metro area ever since.

1994-1997, 1998-1999

St. John's College

B.A. Liberal Arts, 1999
I could write a book about this "study of the Great Books" education. But, it was in Santa Fe, NM, while I attended this small but mighty liberal arts college, that I found my voice and my calling as a musician and a songwriter.

1992-1994

Bard College

I studied everything. I learned to skate board and climb water towers. I met Cornell West - he signed my copy of his book "stay prophetic", and I gave Ani Difranco a photograph of shopping carts full of dirty snow in a parking lot, after the second performance I saw her in on our tiny campus. I took classes from Wadada Leo Smith and Daren Hagen. I participated in campus organizing and protests around racism and diversity. I studied abroad in Russia for a Summer. I left before I had to declare a major.