I am a media composer, producer, and keyboard/synth player.  I completed my Masters at the University of Miami Frost School of Music in the Media Scoring and Production Program studying under Carlos Rivera and Camilo Rodriguez.   I completed my bachelors in music as a Composition and TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) double major at Oberlin Conservatory.  In Composition, I studied under Dr. Stephen Hartke, and in TIMARA, I studied under Ami Dang and Arie Hsu.  Before Oberlin, I graduated from the Juilliard Pre-College program in Composition, studying with Dr. Ira Taxin for composition and with Dr. Ernest Barretta for piano.

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          My skills and experience are in diverse musical areas, ranging across experimental music, progressive rock, solo and ensemble performance, free improvisation, interface design, multi-media composition and performance, orchestration, and music theory.  I have written music for large and small ensembles, solo instruments, live electronics, installations, and electroacoustic music.  My compositional style is driven by research and experimentation with sound and synthesizers, the perception of sound, sonic environments, extended performance techniques, noise, film scoring, and song-writing/poetry composition.  As an improviser, I perform on piano, keyboards and synths.

 

          Through my extensive training during the five years at Juilliard, I was able to test out of all levels of music theory classes at Oberlin and pursue the highest level courses in theory.  I was also employed by the conservatory to teach theory as a tutor to all levels of students at Oberlin.  My most exciting job at Oberlin was being a research assistant, working with TIMARA’s technology director Abby Aresty, in the Crafting Sound Lab at the conservatory.  Specifically, I worked on a project called Of Earth and Sun, which is an audio installation in Pittsburg, PA that creates a sonic environment of nature sounds that mimic the nature of the city using weather and time information.  At Frost, I have scored various short films, and produced for many songwriters.  In addition, I was able to collaborate alongside fellow film composers Luis Alacan and Simon Villarreal to score a feature-length thriller called Art of Diversion.  Currently, I am working to pursue teaching in higher-education positions.

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         My most recent project involves a sensory-friendly early music teaching program called Noise and Buttons.  During my breaks from school at Miami and Oberlin for the last six years, I taught part-time at Mercer County Special Services School District (MCSSSD) in New Jersey, working with disabled children.  In the summers of 2022 and 2023, I served as the music teacher for both preschool and high school students during MCSSSD's Extended School Year (ESY) program.  This experience, coupled with my education in interactive media at Oberlin, inspired the development of Noise and Buttons, an inclusive music education project.  Noise and Buttons aims to make music education more accessible for neurodivergent students by integrating sensory-friendly hardware and software interfaces.  I created a generative synthesizer program in Max MSP that allows users to manipulate tempo, rhythm, timbre, and harmony using a physical button box.  Each aspect is labeled with a color and corresponds to the button box I built to work with the app. Red is tempo, yellow is rhythm, green is timbre, and blue is harmony.  Pressing the buttons quickly results in random value changes, and long presses will give users more precise control.  During my time as a summer music teacher at MCSSSD, I utilized this app with my students to teach my music classes.  I made an eight-part lesson plan where I used musical examples generated from Noise and Buttons to teach the different musical aspects to my students.  Many of them were able to grasp the concepts very easily with this project, and the physical box proved to be extremely accessible for them.  As their final project, every class used the skills they learned from my teachings and the app to create their own songs.  The app is now available as a web application for anyone to try.

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         Along the way, I have been recognized by various contests and programs.  Among these, I was lucky enough to have studied at a music festival internationally before COVID-19, at the highSCORE Festival in Pavia Italy, under Amy Beth Kirsten, David Ludwig and Dimitri Tymoczko during the summer of 2019.  I am a  BUTI (Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute) alumni as a composition program attendee, and a Curtis Institute Summerfest composition program alumni as well. I have also been involved with the American Composers Forum’s NextNotes high school composition contest as an award winner in 2018 and have been a five time finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards. Tribeca New Music named me as an “Emerging Composer” and my work has been performed at the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival.  I was also a National Young Arts Foundation Honorable Mention award winner, among other awards and merits.

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