What on earth are you doing playing the saxophone?

Consequently, the most effective question of my middle school years. My band teacher said I should quit saxophone and audition for the District Choir. Shy kid singing with no one around — or so I thought. I took his advice, and call it beginner’s luck, a keen ear or both, I won First Chair.

I started performing out at 15, and at 16, earned the Maine State “Best Jazz Vocalist” award. Quitting the saxophone was turning out to be good.

Sometimes, you get lucky when a teacher sees something before you do.

After undergrad, I moved to Boston and coached hundreds of singers, fronted a band that performed around the Northeast, recorded an album in a bathroom, and earned TV placements for my songs in Germany.

I had a vision for New York. I knew I could build a teaching practice there, and become an artist amidst the city canvas. My move was funded by an I.T. company, but after the music-loving CEO hosted a karaoke night, I had it coming:

What on earth are you doing selling I.T. services?

That got me thinking. I learned of a professor at Columbia University who had collaborated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to study flow in children’s music learning. That convinced me to apply, and I was accepted and won a scholarship. I.T was out.

I started traveling between family homes, testing ideas with curious learners while working on my graduate degree in Music & Music Education.

After graduation and in the margins between work and teaching, my lunch break became an investigative lab. A 30-day street performance experiment in Central Park led me to a 365-day music-making challenge in the practice rooms at 92NY, down the hall from my office. One day, a knock.

Why on earth haven’t you recorded these songs?

Said renowned jazz artist Brian Landrus in the doorway on his surprise visit. Later, while upstate over New Year’s, I asked my host if I could play the piano. That was GRAMMY-winner Malcolm Burn, who invited me to his studio the next day. Maritime Cowboy was praised by a Sony Music Executives, The Juilliard School, a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. A slew of listeners and my student’s families funded the work. Things were starting to intertwine. The following year, one hundred six-year-olds became my choir.

Suddenly, I had a powerful glimpse at music, curiosity, cognition and play.

To that end, I spent the better part of the pandemic creating and testing a music puzzle called Mystery Mashup — the culmination of a 10,000 hours of private music instruction — still new to North Carolina, I wandered into an empty church — as exploring musicians does — to play the Petrof. That afternoon, late Fall 2022, the Reverend peeked out from a back room.

Where on earth did you come from?

2.5 years as resident church vocalist-pianist and totaling 75 dates/year…suddenly, things were starting to come full circle. I looked fondly on those early Boston days, and the challenge of first performing as a self-accompanied singer. “Alas”, I said to myself, “Quite the troubadour, aren’t we.”