Bio:

I am an idiosyncratic pianist, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. My influences are classical, jazz, and some other stuff. I’m a spiritual person and that  affects my music. Listen to my music to find out if you like it.

Artist’s Statement:

On one hand, my music is just my music. I make these sounds because I like them, and if someone else out there likes them too, then all the better.

But in addition to that, it’s a constant experiment in integrating my philosophy, my ideas, my meditation practice, and many other parts of me into one creative enterprise.

When I was nineteen or so I began attempting the Sam Harris challenge, which is to see if you can stop telling little white lies, or any lies, completely. I came to think there was a subtler form of lying that you could call inauthenticity, which is basically saying and doing things for ulterior motives. The purpose of music is hard to describe, but you know it when you have a good musical experience. I try to keep that as my lone guiding light. That means being willing to sacrifice other motives for the sake of the breathing heart of music.

The basis of my meditation practice is the development of stable attention. I try to be in a state of stable attention whenever I’m playing, and I think this has numerous interesting effects. As my meditation practice deepens, I will explore the integration of deeper and deeper aspects of the meditative experience with my music.

Terence McKenna says that the purpose of art is to go into a world unseen by others and return to tell them of it. Jordan Peterson says to stand on the edge between the known and the unknown and truthfully turn chaos into order. An artist, I guess, is supposed to go out on the frontiers. There aren’t as many physical frontiers left on earth anymore, which is a shame because you could hardly think of anything more beautiful than uncharted wilderness. Luckily, there are endless other frontiers out there to explore.