Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I was surrounded by music. My parents blasted bossa nova and Ella Fitzgerald, while my sisters and I played air guitar to The Beatles and later The Monkees.

I started studying piano when I was in 2nd grade. My first teacher, Mr. Sandy, plied me with sheet music and books covering just about every Broadway musical ever made. Then I got serious. I studied classical music with two well known piano teachers, George Banhalmi and Emilio del Rosario, at the Music Center of the North Shore outside of Chicago. At age 11, I spent a summer at National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan.

I started playing the guitar in college. I spent hours in the dorm bathroom crooning Joni Mitchell, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and my own originals. Pretty soon I was playing regularly in the campus coffee house. I eventually got a BA in piano performance from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

In Japan in the early 80's I fronted a band called Kyoto de Mondo Agogo. We played the cool clubs in Osaka & Kyoto. While in Japan, I also wrote the music and conducted the pit orchestra for a local production of Bertolt Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle."

After leaving Japan, I went to Varanasi, India, where I studied sitar with Ram Chakravarty and classical vocal music with Bholanath Misra.

In the late 80's/early 90's I studied flamenco guitar with Miguel Perez in Seville, Spain.

When I moved to Washington, DC, I started composing/recording music for documentaries and corporate videos.

For the past few years, my house (aka The Frisco Lounge) has become jam central. Almost every weekend, local musicians come by--trumpet, saxophone, bass, not to mention a full assortment of percussion instruments--to hang out, and make music. We cover everything from Burt Bacharach to Bebop to Brazilian standards.