I was born, but like everyone else don’t remember any of the details. My mom was in vaudeville for a time and although we weren’t well off there was always music playing on the radio, or mom singing a bit here and there. Early youth on Rockaway Beach with all the folks from Manhattan taking the subway and bringing their bongos and trumpets and guitars and congas to spend the summer day near the water playing and having fun was simply a seminal influence showing me how music is entwined with life itself. It wasn’t until much later, when I was sixteen, that I received my first drum kit and began lessons with one of the professors at Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Was in many bands none of which had writing original music as their primary goal, with the usual result.
Overall I’d say my music tends to be going somewhere, it may not get there quickly necessarily, but the music is atmospheric and evolving, and within that there is all this stuff going on that not only propels it along, but addresses a need in the listener to become still and yet move with the flow. While listening something unexpected may emerge: textures, melodies, layered rhythms, voicings, sounds, effects; all contribute to the sound image I am pursuing, where the image is far from static and evoking it musically is the game of the moment.
There are enormous amounts of influences that found their way into my psyche and consequently, the album. I studied drums for a time with jazz great Alan Dawson and learned tabla from Pandit Shashi Nayak, so the rhythmic element comes in all the time. Having been in the Boston area for over 30 years now I’ve been exposed to a myriad of musical genres and styles. I’ve seen Weather Report, Miles Davis, Pat Metheny Band, King Crimson, Bill Frisell, Dave Weckl Band, Bill Evans. experimental electronic music, gamelon orchestras, Chinese and Tibetan troubadours, great folk artists like Patty Larkin and John Gorka, not to mention The Boston Symphony. I feel enormous inspiration anytime I hear Robert Wyatt, and was a Soft Machine fan from day one (saw them in Baltimore with Jimi Hendrix, also a huge influence). The Beatles (nuff said).
ESP Studio where the music emerges, Expanding Sky Music, my publishing company, and an ever growing network of artists both musical, visual, physical (as in healing arts), and spiritual have come together to begin what I hope will be a very interesting, challenging, and rewarding movement together.