With an undergraduate degree in music theory/cognition from Northwestern and a MM/DMA in performance from Yale, I believe in a well-rounded and holistic musical education which integrates entrepreneurship, analysis, score study, improvisation, cognition, and social and historical context into my teaching and playing. Effective technique is a means to communicate composition. I also have a passion for collaborative piano, jazz and continuo-keyboard playing, and I often accompany my students in lessons and recitals, borrowing techniques that I’ve observed in vocal coachings and from theater directors.

I am very fortunate to hold a full-time tenure-track position at James Madison University in the beautiful bluestone area of the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg, Virginia. A public school with nearly 20,000 undergraduates and a 2017 National FCS Championship, the music program at JMU offers an innovative concentration in Music Industry as well as traditional Music Performance, Music Education, and Jazz. Competitive yet generous graduate stipends are currently available for MM and DMA. I also welcome gifted JMU non-music majors, hold a private studio of intermediate and advanced high school students from around the Mid-Atlantic, offer extended sessions with students from far and wide, and often work with aspiring young musicians when I am on the road.

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During the summer, I serve on faculty at a few bass workshops and festivals:

• Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Sewanee, TN

• Peabody Bass Works, Baltimore, MD

• Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Putney, VT

I’ve given masterclasses and clinics across the country at universities and conservatories such as the Colburn School, Mannes School of Music, Peabody Institute, New England Conservatory, Utah State, and more

In 2017, I gave a lecture and recital on the foundations of my Concerto after Haydn at the Pittsburgh Double Bass Symposium. Haydn [Re]Creation is a clinic on 18th century composition and cadenza-writing (after my dissertation, The Cadenza Question) as it relates to the beauty of musical patterns, interpretation of bass lines, historical modes of improvisation, and Ms. Pac-Man.

The lecture is aimed at tooling the audience with the basic formulas of historically-informed composition and concludes with an on-the-spot group creation of a cadenza. The clinic can also serve as a pre-concert lecture before a performance of the Concerto after Haydn.