About Me, the Musician

I'm a pianist, conductor, and composer pretty much equally. I grew up as a classical pianist, studying with teachers in the Boston area from kindergarten through college; I also studied theory and composition beginning in the third grade. Then, after all those years of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart -- and my favorite concerto, Khachaturian's -- I played Into the Woods in college, and I caught the theatre bug.

I first got the idea to write a musical during college, when I saw a fellow student's thesis-musical. I followed suit, and I composed Ordinary People (based on Judith Guest's novel), which was performed in May 1996, thanks in part to the good folks in the permissions department at Paramount Pictures. Since then I've composed the music for several musicals whose lyrics were written by collaborators I met in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. I also wrote two commissioned piano pieces: "The Chagall Suite," an eight-movement piano suite inspired by paintings of Marc Chagall, and "Conversations," an 11-minute piano tribute to Chagall and Elvis Presley that incorporates jazz, blues, gospel, rock, klezmer, and Russian classical themes.

From October 2002 to May 2004, I toured as pit keyboard player with the international company of the musical Fosse. Since then, I've been back in New York City, conducting musicals, performing in cabaret shows, doing music transcriptions and transpositions for hire, and working as a vocal coach for actors and singers.