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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
I live in Portland, Oregon with my favorite woman,
Barbara, who is a delightful soprano with a soft spot for Julie Andrews. I work as a
bookkeeper for  a wine
distributor, where they know my hobbies and trust me anyway. I record in a small home
studio that is reasonably out of date, running Macintosh 8.6 and still using an Atari
1040st.
I spell and punctuate well. I once drove across the state of
South Dakota in a snowstorm with a Stradivari violin in the back seat. I make giant
heads and masks out of papier-mâché. I am an annoying source of unprovoked rhyming
couplets. I got married once. I watch many bad old movies. I love coffee.
I can run 10-key by touch at 15,000 KPH. I have eaten dinner with Jean-Louis
Chave. I speak fairly awful French. I am an incessant whistler. I have a
sister who lives in Walla Walla and is married to a trombone player. I tend to fade
the ball off the tee, although I draw my long irons. I am no more, no less than one
credit hour short of an Arts and Letters degree at Portland State, and have been so for
twenty years.
A CONDENSED MUSICAL HISTORY (WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS)
After mastering the piano standard "Mechanical Men" at the age of 10, I eschewed
any further musical pursuits until the age of 15, when forces beyond my control focused
the attention of my entire being on Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
album, which I ingested and learned in its entirety. Shortly thereafter, I began to
try to emulate the progressive keyboard players of the day. This process included studying classical piano, copping tons of
tunes off of badly-worn vinyl, wearing a black wool trench coat and playing in various
"progressive" rock bands from high-school until well beyond the time that any
significant number of people in the world really wanted to hear that sort of thing.
At that point, I temporarily put the keyboards in the basement and went to Portland State
University, where I had the good fortune of studying composition with Tomas Svoboda, an inexhaustible
source of musical insight and inspiration. I played lots of Chopin and Mozart, which
was less inspiring. Eventually, I started playing keyboards again in club bands,
until it dawned on me that club bands were becoming a rotten way to pay the rent, and that
I wasn't writing much music of my own. I accordingly quit the band I was in, set up
my gear in the studio and got a job as a bookkeeper.
Besides the pop/funk/whaddayacallit songs I write, I have also written a passel of piano
pieces and am working, by fits and starts, on a string quartet which, upon its completion,
my friend Ute has promised to foist upon her quartet. Hopefully, I'll get a recording.
DESERT ISLAND INFORMATION
THE FIVE MOVIES
Bliss (the 1985 movie from Australia, not the 1997 soft-porn)
Cinema Paradiso
Un Coeur En Hiver
La Belle et Le Bete (Jean Cocteau)
The Thin Man
These, of course, change every so often.
I have an extensive list of "The Five Movies" from many friends and
acquaintances. If you sign the guestbook, which I highly
encourage, tell me your five movies, and something interesting about yourself as well.
THE FIVE CDs
Britten Orchestral Works, Leonard Bernstein conductor, (Sony)
Sunday in the Park with George, Original Broadway Cast Recording
Extensions, Dave Holland Quartet
Saga Dos Migrantes, Sergio and Odair Assad
The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, Django Reinhardt (Flapper Records)
These change all the time.
THE FIVE BOOKS
Blue Trout and Black Truffles, Joseph Wechsberg
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Adventures on The Wine Route, Kermit Lynch
Planet of the Blind, Stephen Kuusisto
Long Ago In France, M.F.K. Fisher.
 (In a true desert island scenario, probably Proust's
"Remembrance of Things Past" would have to be included, since it is both
engaging and interminable, to say nothing of the fact that to date I have only read the
first volume.)
Hey, drop
me a line if you are so inclined.
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