OVERVIEW/Origins I heard a violin when I was a small child, I wanted to play it. I studied violin and guitar. While in youth orchestra, I would make up my own parts rather than play what was written. Bored by playing other people’s music, I began to write and sing my own songs. Over the years, I’ve added piano and other instruments to my array. These days I tend toward ritualistic, expressionist improvisation on violin with overlays of cello and electronics, but my work as a composer and multi-instrumentalist musician takes many shapes: It ranges from performing alone on stage with my guitar as a singer-songwriter, to collaborating on an elaborate noise opera, to scoring films, and more. 

CONTINUED OVERVIEW: More examples of range of practice When I’m not joining forces with other artists, I sometimes lead shows that involve elements of theater. I spent time with The Wooster Group, which led me to appreciate experimental devising processes. I created a duet with my father while he was experiencing dementia; this work was presented at LA’s REDCAT xxx-seat theater in YEAR. Recently I’ve been learning the arts of clowning and physical theater. I feel myself to be in the lineage of Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson, musicians whose practices bled into other forms of performance.

WHAT I’M TRYING TO DO WITH MY WORK No matter what I am doing, I am always seeking to create a beautiful enriching space in which all of us can touch our creative and imaginative selves. Practicing music is a sustaining and healing practice for me personally, and I believe for audiences as well. Working with my father on our duet started me on a path of looking more deeply into music and healing, getting involved in initiatives to explore the intersections of art and healthcare and developing work for the memory loss community. 

CREATIVE PROCESS/HOW Recording and mixing is a big part of my musical creative process that starts with a seed feeling or emotion, which I reach for through solo improvisation on violin, for example. Once I’ve recorded the solo, I write instrumentation to contextualize that feeling and craft a house around it. There’s a certain magic in improvisation and I try to preserve that as I play and record multiple tracks to create enigmatic, layered works that invite audiences to go below the surface of the sound and enter a process of discovery. 

INFLUENCES/what inspires/cultural context I am a part-Polish guy from Northern Arizona, a place with lots of pine trees, mountainous beauty, and not enough water. My family did not adhere to any ancestral religious or cultural traditions, however I grew up next to the largest Indigenous population, and now, later in life, I am aware how much I appreciate Indigenous, especially Hopi, ways of thinking that I was exposed to.  I always had a sense of myself as a lone wanderer in the landscape, even at times calling myself the Mystic Cowboy. The spiritual wanderer in me is inspired by Sufi, Qawwali, and other devotional forms that do not follow the rules of Western music theory, forms that carry something ancient and powerfully use the properties of sound to affect our bodies. I value music that evokes deep emotional responses, is experienced in community, and has the power to heal.