Statement of Purpose 

I am a passionate creator in sound and story and seek to be a catalyst for innovative collaboration between movement, music and text.

I am an intellectual nomad and an energetic creative who operates best in large-scale collaborative works with choreographers, directors, film makers and visual artists in creating lyric neo-mythologies for the contemporary stage and screen. 

My quest is to infuse classical concert music with electronics and pop music production. I see a future of engaging, visceral, emotional and intelligent chamber pop that combines lush orchestrations, music technology and lyrical melodies and poetry

         My teachers Joan La Barbara and Julia Wolfe directed me toward Princeton.  They both felt strongly that I would find a very compatible artistic home in Princeton’s ethos of aural exploration and deep interest in interdepartmental collaboration. After significant research, I have discovered in both teachers and students, artists asking similar questions to my own and wanting to explore complementary territory in sound and story.

Before I was a musician. I was a dancer, apprenticing with Miami International Ballet Company and I also spent a lot of my childhood in the theater, performing in musicals and plays.

At an early age, inspired by my father’s record collection, I picked up guitar and began writing songs. Since then, I have released four albums of original compositions, published two poetry books, sung in operas, conducted choirs and have been a band leader for rock/fusion bands. I continue to sing in choirs, write songs and collaborate with artists in dance, theater and visual art, engaging them in improvisations and discussions.

  I was a Presser Music scholar at Roosevelt University and was the recipient of four honorary scholarships at NYU in addition to being a Creative Career Fellow. Most importantly, I am an endlessly curious and voracious reader, listener, observer and student of music, all forms of art, psychology and the future of music tech.

During the pandemic I set up my home studio as a virtual performance space where I perform weekly Ableton live sets and teach music production and songwriting group courses. With the immediate future of live performance uncertain as it is, I am looking to expand on these virtual performance series and songwriting/production courses to guide musicians through the process of writing, arranging, mixing and releasing their own albums.

Once travel opens up again I hope to spend more time studying and collaborating cross-culturally in residencies with artists and institutions around the world. I am specifically interested in writing for and with dance companies, theaters and experimental ensembles.

What excites me most about the Princeton cohort is the space of emotionality and storytelling in their concert music. The works I have heard and seen of the students and teachers at Princeton fits very closely within my core values and interests as a composer. I excel in working with theater, dance, rock bands, pop production, chamber groups and choirs and am very quick to make connections between seemingly disparate musical styles.

 Right now, I feel my weakest point is my classical orchestration skills and see this as a realm of expertise in which Steve Mackey would be an excellent mentor. Additionally, there is a lot that I would like to explore in music technology techniques and performance practices for which Jeff Snyder would be an excellent guide. I also feel that my overall vision of combining folk, pop, electronic and orchestral musics into a chamber pop style for my records and live performance would benefit a lot from the guidance of Dan Trueman. For uncovering larger conceptual frameworks for the longer works (operas and ballets) that I’d like to construct, I feel I benefit a lot from studying with Dmitri Tymoczko.

         I deeply appreciate the sense of community amongst the composer cohort at Princeton and believe I would thrive in a collaborative environment of open-minded composers. I thrive with open schedules and have a keen ability to plan my own course work and consistently put out a very high level of work. My brief time with Jenny Beck and Annika Socolofksky has given me a very good idea about the rapport of Princeton students, and I am looking forward to integrating myself into the Princeton environment.

At Princeton I plan to continue to develop a few larger projects that I am working on including a chamber opera and a set of acapella vocal works for women’s voices. Furthermore, I would like to continue to work with media and visual spectacle in tandem with my music for an immersive performance experience of sound and story. I am looking forward to the opportunity to write for the New Jersey Symphony, the Dance Department, the Science Department, the Princeton choirs and the visiting ensembles in residence. The open collaborative spaces at the Lewis Center and the top-notch facilities will easily lend themselves to large collaborative works beyond the concert hall context.

I am not applying anywhere else. I am not shopping PhD programs. I have a specific interest in contributing to and benefiting from the unique environment that Princeton has created for collaboration, research and innovation and feel deeply that the five-year program would be a perfect fit for my work. The time, space, resources and most of all the community of high-level professors and students who are searching for the new and welcoming contemporary sounds and performance practice beyond classical chamber music as well as the spirit of collaboration amongst the students and the departments at Princeton is exactly the environment in which an artist like myself could thrive. Having spent some time observing and discussing music with various faculty and students I feel very confident that I am on the same page as the sonic explorers currently working at Princeton. I am outgoing, seek out collaborations, excel at nurturing creative spaces, and I will work well at Princeton.