Background

I was exposed to music soon after I was born. My dad was generally unopinionated about music, but my mom really loved classical, and she signed me up for piano lessons at age 5. Outside of classical and folk music, which they both enjoyed, I had little exposure to anything else until about grade 6, when I started listening to the radio in the days of Nirvana and Guns ‘n Roses. At the end of grade 8, I’d finished my grade 9 piano exam with Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and had had enough of classical. While I didn’t know a whole lot about other genres of music, I wasn’t enjoying classical enough to continue.

In high school, I discovered jazz when listening to our school’s jazz band at a fall concert. I promptly dropped clarinet, my chosen band instrument back in grade 7, and switched to sax so I could get into the jazz band. I’d also been playing piano for both the junior and senior choirs, as well as continuing to play clarinet in concert band. In my final two years, I got to play bass clarinet in Oliver! and sax and clarinet in Anything Goes. I’d also started playing with some friends at church, first in a small band that covered popular songs at the time and later on, as more of my church friends learned instruments, we had our own youth-oriented church services on Sunday nights, and I often played piano for those. I also played a bit of drums and bass as well, both at church and jamming with friends at school, when we needed someone to cover the parts.

In university, I got a spot with our school’s jazz band (not that hard, as the University of Waterloo is a more technically-oriented school so there wasn’t much competition), and played with them for 9 terms, 8 on alto sax and one on piano, as well as directing the band briefly as a substitute during grad school. My former residence also put on Footloose while I was a grad student, and I was co-musical director, rehearsal pianist, and Keyboard 1 player, leading rehearsals when the other musical director couldn’t make it and arranging the reed parts to accommodate four players (we didn’t realize that there’d be a reed book for only one player when we offered them spots, and didn’t want to turn them away).

That same year, I discovered OverClocked Remix, which has been huge in diversifying my musical tastes, as a lot of the remixes I like are ones outside the realm of jazz and orchestral/classical music, which had generally been my exclusive musical interests up until that point.

Focus

I see myself primarily as a keyboard player, which, at the moment, involves live playing. I’m working to get my technical skill and speed closer to where it used to be before I developed tendonitis at age 16 and cut back my playing, and I’m also working on learning how to use audio effects, synth sound programming, remixing and arranging, developing as a rhythm (i.e. non-lead part) keyboard player, and learning to play the classic keyboards authentically.

Influences

Keyboards: Joe Zawinul, Jordan Rudess, Keith Emerson, Chick Corea, Joey Defrancesco, Jimmy Smith
Jazz: Pat Metheny, Weather Report, Zawinul Syndicate, The Yellowjackets, Miles Davis
Classical: Chopin, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Copland, Debussy
Remixers: See the links in the right sidebar
Other: Nobuo Uematsu, Yasonori Mitsuda, The Black Mages

Gear

Instruments: Upright piano, Nord Stage Compact 73 keyboard, Korg TR 61
Software: Cubase 4, Native Instruments Kore, Absynth, B4-II, Battery, FM8, Kontakt
Amp: Roland KC-150 4-Channel Mixing Amp
Other Gear: Behringer MX-400 4-channel mixer