thirteen ways

The title of this entry is a little, no, actually very, misleading. My personal bio on our website has been blank for almost two years now. I’m begging you – if you know how to write a good bio, then write mine, because the first thing I feel obligated to admit to you is that, for whatever reason, I find that I am uniquely unqualified. I have tried often to write a bio, and every time I have failed.

Every professional musician should have at least two bios, a long and a short version, and usually nowadays an additional third, less formal bio primarily for websites. I have a short bio, the nuts-n-bolts, fundamentally informative but generally devoid of anything personally revealing. The short bio is relatively harmless. I prefer the short bio.

The long bio and/or the informal bio are where one has the opportunity to elaborate about ones self (oneself?) ad nauseam. Where many people explore endlessly creative ways to manufacture bullshit about themselves. Padding the resume. I have absolutely no patience for this which I suppose is why I find it so thoroughly impossible to come up with extremely interesting things to say about myself. Or to write things about myself that I think anyone else will find interesting. I prefer the short bio.

Whatever. People keep bugging me about this, so if for no other reason than to get them off my back, I need to come up with something. Perhaps I should start with a list or outline of some kind. I will try.

• Personal History. I grew up in bucolic western Pennsylvania with the large extended family on my mother’s side enjoying the kind of enchanted childhood you usually only read about.
• Education. I’ve had the privilege of studying privately with:
  • John Alfieri (Interlochen Arts Academy)
  • Michael Rosen (BM - Oberlin Conservatory)
  • Gordon Gottlieb (MM unfinished at Yale University. Yes, I’m a Yale dropout, but I left to play with eighth blackbird so can you really blame me?)
  • The Percussion Group: Cincinnati – Allen Otte, James Cully, and Russell Burge (Artist Diploma – Chamber Music Performance at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music)
  • Michael Burritt (MM – Percussion Performance at Northwestern University. Yes, I finished this one)
• There are so many others I’ve learned from. I could continue distributing accolades. They all deserve my thanks.
• Family. Ok, admittedly, I could go on at great length about this. Margret, my wife, is the only reason I’ve made it this far and there is not a day that passes in which I am not overwhelmed by how lucky I am to have her. Or that she’ll have me, depending on how you look at it. I’m not trying to be mushy here. Completely, unabashedly frank. She is everything to me and that’s the truth. And I haven’t even started in yet about our daughter, Eva. As of November 2006 she’s three and a half, and beautiful, and brilliantly precocious, and I can’t express what it means to have her in my life, what it means to me to feel like I’m living for something so much greater than myself. Well. Now that’s interesting. Apparently at complete odds with my earlier postulations, I’m suddenly at no loss for words. I think the difference is that I’m not writing about myself. But this is my bio about me me me. I’m supposed to be writing about myself. Get back to work.
• I play with eighth blackbird. This is probably why you’re reading this blog in the first place. If you’d like to know more about this, here’s a very useful link: www.eighthblackbird.com. But are you really such a moron that you couldn’t figure that out on your own? No, of course you could. If you want to know about eighth blackbird, you don’t need my bio to help you with that. eighth blackbird has its own materials, and plenty of it. I’ll save my breath for fascinating information you can only find here and nowhere else. My bio. Mine.
• Non-eighth blackbird performances. Now this is information you probably won’t find anywhere else, but I’ll be honest, there isn’t a whole lot to say and I’m not going to pretend there is (please see commentary about manufacturing bullshit, above). To be honest, I feel enormously successful and lucky to be able to say that eighth blackbird has been my only career, my full-time job, that my ensemble has been able to provide enough work for me that I don’t need to look for work elsewhere, nor do I really have the time or ability to take on much else. I learn music slowly. I need to practice, a lot. I have a hard time keeping up with my susurrific colleagues. Ok, fine. Here are few experiences I’ve had over the years. This is not a list of prestigious accomplishments. They are experiences that are meaningful to me.
  • Peter Klatzow’s Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano.
  • Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Two Percussion, sharing the stage with Mike Rosen on timpani.
  • Steve Reich’s Drumming with So Percussion.
  • Cabrillo Festival of Music and its fantastic percussion section under the baton of Marin Alsop.
  • Chen Yi’s Percussion Concerto in an arrangement with the Shanghai String Quartet, and Chen Yi narrating.
  • Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the Nature of Water in a performance interpreted by the Blair Thomas Puppet Theater (disclaimer: this is an eighth blackbird production, but I add it here because it was such a unique experience as a soloist).
  • Collaborating with Matthew McCabe.
  • Proudly endorsing for Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments.
  • There are many more

Now what? Oh yes…

• Non-Professional Experiences, i.e. Miscellanea.
  • Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
  • Scuba diving off St. John in the Virgin Islands National Park.
  • Celebrating Y2K in Las Vegas.
  • Learning to ride horses with my cousins.
  • Date-night with my wife.
  • Reading to my daughter.

[Insert expression of startled realization here.] In the process of blogging (i.e. procrastinating) about my inability to write a bio, I seem to have written an entry basically approximating a bio. It’s a blog - It’s a bio - It’s a blio. It’s close enough. It serves the same function, doesn’t it? How did this happen? It’s kind of like not being able to find something, and then finding that thing later when you’re actually looking for something else. Well. So that’s that, then. Next I’ll work on my taxes.