Music careers have several milestones that make you feel like you have advanced so quickly, you are on the next level of your game. These are points in time that completely change everything for you as an artist. Pieces of knowledge that once felt like many letters of the alphabet suddenly converge to become words, phrases, or entire books that you no longer have to interpret - they can be instantly recalled. I have been playing guitar and writing music since I was about 13, so now that I am in my late 40's, these “level up” events have happened to me several times.
Possibly the most significant advancement for me was my education in audio production at Hennepin Technical College from 2002-2004. I left HTC with knowledge and skills I never thought would be possible. One of the many life changing things I discovered during my tenure at HTC was film scoring, which I spent the following 5-6 years after HTC studying and perfecting.
This lead to 2010. 2010 was a very important year in my music career, and April of 2010 set things in motion that would shape the next decade for me. In early 2010 I was working as a freelance composer and audio engineer, and one of the many talented people I was working with was the Minneapolis composer Hiram Titus. Hiram gave me his ticket to a composing workshop at McNally Smith college in St Paul since he had other commitments and could not attend. The workshop was called Hollywood Calling, which was an all day class that happened to be on my birthday. Taught by orchestrator Sean McMahon and Hollywood composer Christopher Young, this class completely changed the way I approached writing orchestral music in just a few hours. The assignment for the class was to score an action clip from the movie Spiderman 3. I received a very positive response on my work from Sean, and this convinced me to apply for a residency at Christopher Young’s Tilden House in Culver City. This ultimately led me to Los Angeles in September of 2010.
I have a large amount of music to release in 2025. I will be starting off with “Armored Car” (the orchestral piece I wrote for the Hollywood calling class), several other pieces of orchestral music, and several new nylon guitar pieces for my Acoustic Eden project. Please follow all 3 of my projects on social media and check out my updated website for more details…. More to come soon!
