I work well with kids because I enjoy sharing my passion for music. I’m very patient and have the discipline and education to explain and interpret musical topics, simple and complex.

I was born and raised in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. I played a variety of instruments as a kid, and eventually settled on the drums sometime around middle school.

Around age 14, my younger sister began taking guitar lessons. Whenever she wasn’t practicing, I’d sneak into her room and mess around on her nylon string guitar, figuring out chords and trying to replicate the music I heard her practicing. From that point on, I spent all of my spare time teaching myself how to play the guitar, and continued to take drum lessons and play in bands as a drummer. By the time I graduated from high school, my parents had already bought me an acoustic guitar, and I knew that I wanted to pursue music in college and beyond.

My college career began at Boston University, which is where I took my first formal guitar lesson, in a group guitar class. That year, I saw as much live music as was humanly possible. I even traveled to New York several times to see the Allman Brothers at the Beacon Theatre and Medeski, Martin & Wood at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

As the spring semester of my freshmen year rolled around, I decided that I would need to relocate in order to pursue a music degree. I chose Connecticut College for several reasons: their music & technology major combined theory, performance, electronic music and sound production, in addition to free classical guitar lessons. They also have an old squash court that’s been converted into rehearsal space for campus bands.

I really enjoyed my college experience, mainly because I was able to study music, my greatest passion. The college even funded a two month internship the summer before my senior year in Ghana, where I taught music in a small fishing village called Kpando.

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