I was born in 1953 in Moss Point, Mississippi where I lived until I was eighteen. I grew up immersed in the full range of music of the United States at the time. I performed in orchestras, wind bands, pop-rock-R&B groups, jazz groups, folk groups, and vocal ensembles. I was fascinated by all instruments and how they worked, learning to play many – piano, organ, bassoon, saxophone, oboe, flute – and experimented with many others, such as guitar, double bass, and various brass and percussion instruments. In college in the 1970s and 1980s, I was trained as a modernist composer, but I was simultaneously exploring the rest of the musical landscape, including everything from very early music history and a wide range of world musics to the latest experimental music of all genres. After learning to compose in many styles, including cutting edge modernist styles, I gradually rejected being pinned down by any one musical style or language, preferring freedom to compose whatever I choose, without boundaries or restrictions. That diversity of output sometimes makes it difficult to categorize or even describe my work. I love to integrate diverse styles. I like to merge and blend ideas into something new and different that isn't easy to tease apart into its influences. I prefer style synthesis to post-modernist style juxtaposition. My music seems to me to be thoroughly American and to reflect the broad musical background of my culture.

• As a child, I was obsessively drawn to Beethoven’s symphonies. When I was 11, at a time without internet or many classical music stations (certainly not in southern Mississippi), I begged for a Christmas gift of a boxed set of Beethoven symphonies and wore them out over the next few years, sometimes playing them as loud as possible when the house was empty. At the same time, I was just as passionate about jazz and some of the best pop music of the day. These are very different passions, but this diversity has been a hallmark of my musical taste throughout my life….that I enjoy and am drawn to many styles and composers that are very different.

• At age thirteen, I was lucky enough to be given the chance to join the Gulf Coast Symphony, a Biloxi based regional orchestra that included performers from the New Orleans Symphony, the Mobile Symphony, and various universities in the region. I can’t overestimate what an amazing experience this was for me. For the next four years, I performed with the orchestra, while also performing with a wide range of ensembles, from folk duos to jazz big bands and everything in between.

• I spent the first six years of my life in Escatawpa, Mississippi, at that time a rural town of about 500 people. At the age of six, my family moved nearby to Moss Point, which at the time had a population of about 5,000 or so. These were both very small towns with very few opportunities for artistic enrichment…I didn’t hear an orchestra live until I was eleven or twelve years old. Although there was very little high-art culture where I grew up, there was an influence that I believe was very powerful…a strong cultural connection with the land… bayous, swamp, rivers, creeks, ocean, beaches, pine forests, red clay, and more. These are strange and powerful physical influences whose impact I only understood much later in my life. The world of my childhood was exotic in ways that were completely invisible to me in the moment.

• During my Bachelor of Music training at the University of Southern Mississippi, I studied with Luigi Zaninelli (composition), Donald Munsell (bassoon), and Wilfred Delphin (piano). I performed alternately in the orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz band, and chorus, and I played “gigs” of all kinds: parties, dinners, weddings, clubs….but also a brief stint with a circus.

• My M.M. and D.M.A. studies were at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I had no funding for graduate school, so I moved to Michigan and lived for a year while playing in a disco band six nights a week. Boogie Oogie. After a year working and paying taxes, I was considered a state resident, and I enrolled in the M.M. program at Michigan. Between M.M. and D.M.A. study, I worked for three years as a dance accompanist at Eastern Michigan University in a staff position that required modern dance piano improvisation for about 30 hours a week. I also started a jingle business with three other musicians and did tons of freelance composing, arranging, and keyboard session work in Ann Arbor and Detroit.

• I returned to U. Michigan for my D.M.A. work, this time on a full fellowship, while still gigging for additional funding. After my coursework at Michigan, I worked for a year at the University of Utah School of Music as a visiting assistant professor. The following year I completed my dissertation and was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. I can’t overstate what a life changing experience the Rome Prize was for me.

• Following my 1987 year in living in Rome as a fellow at the academy, I went to the University of Louisville School of Music in 1988 as a tenure track assistant professor of music theory and composition and retired in July 2021. My time at the University of Louisville School of Music afforded me many benefits, not the least of which were wonderful performance colleagues who embraced my compositions.