My group String Power will perform at 9pm Thursday July 1st at The Tea Lounge. 837 Union St. btwn 6th and 7th Ave in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It will be a heavy hitting, no holds barred show featuring 12 excellent string players and the superb drummer Matt Crane. We had a very successful second performance of my concert, The Real (?) Me at Roulette on March 19. Gelsey Bell did an outstanding performance of This is the Real Me, which I wrote in collaboration with Gelsey. Lee Todd Lacks did a bang up job with the hatemail piece, Your (so called) 'Music' and Matt Crane and I tore it up on some improvised duo extrapolations of themes from This is the Real Me. Click here to read an interview about that concert. Click here to read program notes and see videos from the November 15 performance of this concert. I have released a solo violin CD, 7th Avenue. Click here to buy it or download it from Rhapsody or iTunes. Currently I am performing with rock band Emanuel and the Fear, country/bluegrass band Potbelly Gumbo, my own 12 piece group String Power (to hear samples and become a fan click here!), the violin/percussion duo Golden Crackers and in various other solo and ensemble contexts. I can also be heard busking in the NYC subway stations. See the "tour" section for my upcoming performances.

About me:
My goal is to create clear music that communicates directly and genuinely. I don't like slick music that has been edited and perfected artificially. I like all the subtle nuances, scratches, 'mistakes' that happen naturally and I think that this is a big part of what makes music expressive.

I am continually searching for my own way to combine all of the vastly different types of music I have played into one personal style. But music is about much more than any individual person. For me, music is about connection between musicians, between musician and composer, between musician and audience and between every person that has created music throughout human existence. Music is organic. A tune takes on increasing layers of meaning every time it is played. People may have completely opposing interpretations depending on what associations they have with a particular piece or style. Any assessments of the quality of a musical style are subjective. Everyone values music differently, depending on their experience.

I want people to feel as though they have been taken somewhere when I play. I want to challenge people; this is when they are moved. Otherwise the music becomes like wall paper, in the background and not really noticed. But at the same time, music can be like a foreign language; you might appreciate the sound of it for a moment but you tune it out after a while because you cannot understand. Either way nothing is being communicated.