Performer

Welcome to the Performer side of my website! When you play a musical instrument for many, many years, you accumulate a lot of friends and a lot of memories. Entering information into this website has brought back many friends and memories back to me.

I've always enjoyed musical instruments. My first recollection of trying to play a musical instrument (besides the little toy piano I had as a child) was when I was confined to bed with the measles. My parents gave me a plastic ukelele and of course I would strum the four strings with joy but then Lawrence Welk came on the TV and I saw a guitarist playing. I watched closely as he moved his fingers over the fretboard. I thought to myself, "Eureka! I know how I can play more than four notes now!"

My official start as a musician was like most kids, starting in the band in junior high school. I was a seventh grader with a saxophone! Nice instrument but there were a million saxophone players in the band so by the time I got to the ninth grade, I asked my band director, Mr. Frank Masters, if I could switch to another instrument. He offered the oboe to me and without thinking I just said OK without realizing what I was getting myself into! If anyone had told me I would be spending a large portion of my life sitting at a reed table making reed after reed.... well, I probably would have said OK anyways.

When I started college, I was offered the opportunity to play the English horn. I remember my teacher, Felix Kraus from the Cleveland Orchestra commenting how my vibrato was very suitable for the English horn. It was not until I was stationed at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in the 74th Army Band when I was able to purchase my own English horn, that I really loved this odd cousin of the oboe. By the time I became the second oboist and English horn player for the Amarillo Symphony (pictured left), I was really hooked on making the English horn a household word, so to speak. I guess you could say the English horn gave me the incentive to get into composing and arranging. The repertoire for the English horn is quite small compared to piano, violin, or even the oboe, so hopefully I'm improving the English horn's situation. Shepherd's Trio has been a blessing to help me to expand the English horn repertoire.

My latest crazy adventure started in 2005 when I decided for some odd reason to take up the lever (folk, celtic) harp. That story is listed on the website. I hope you will enjoy the stories, pictures and information about the various performance opportunities I've had over the years. Thanks for visiting!

Please be sure to visit the Composer/Arranger side of my website. I think you will enjoy browsing through all the music listings.