Flexible Musician
Flexible Musician
The Flexible Musician should have experience in many different fields of the musical arts. While my focus as an educator is on the band classroom, I also have performance experience in a variety of other musical areas. On the saxophone, I have been in the Crane Jazz Band and Jazz Ensemble, serving two semesters as Jazz Ensemble's lead alto player. I have performed in multiple pit orchestras, including that of the premiere of the Beautiful and Damned, a musical based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel of the same name first produced at the Jeanne-Rimsky Theater in Port Washington, NY in 2022, along with a showcase of its music at Manhattan's 54 Below in 2023. I have also performed with the Crane Latin Ensemble, a gigging group specializing in the performance Afro-Caribbean jazz, the Kids' Table, a student-organized jazz combo, Arbutus and Vines, a band formed by myself and three colleagues which has had several live performances and recorded an album together, and the Reserved Quartet, a student-formed saxophone quartet which won both the 2021 and 2022 Crane Chamber Competition and which performed at the NAFME Eastern Division Conference 2023 in Rochester. At that performance, the quartet played the piece Reservations, one of my own compositions.
Along with my saxophone experience, I performed in several vocal groups on Potsdam's campus. My curricular performance groups were the Crane Chorus, the largest vocal group on campus whose Candlelight concert each December is broadcast on Mountain Lake PBS, and the Concert Choir, which is among the most selective curricular vocal groups on campus. In non-curricular settings, I spent two semesters with the Potsdam Pointercounts, SUNY Potsdam's all-basso a capella group, and served as the music director for the campus's chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, whose philanthropy (the Mills Music Mission) is to use music to uplift the community by singing at nursing homes, hospitals, and other locations which could benefit from a free performance. Since moving to New York City, I have also connected with the organization's alumni association and continued this community service.
On top of saxophone and voice, I am comfortable performing on upright and electric bass, piano/keyboard, flute, clarinet, and baroque recorder. I have also done basic music production and video editing, which I have done for several performing groups of which I have been a part over the years.
While working in the saxophone studio of Dr. Casey Grev at Crane, I was also enrolled in the composition studios of Dr. Timothy Sullivan and Dr. Ivette Herryman-Rodriguez, during which time I had my own original music performed on several occasions in the concert halls of Crane. The pieces that I wrote during my time at Crane have gone on to be purchased for performance by groups in at least 25 US states and several countries. Along with composing, I have arranged pre-existing music for other instrumentations, including arranging several pieces for the Reserved Quartet and the Kids' Table.
NYS Teaching Standards Element II.1
CR-SEF: Ongoing Professional Learning
My Senior Recital
As a music education student at Crane, I was required to perform a half-hour recital of my primary instrument, saxophone, before graduating from the program. For this recital, I chose to have a diverse set of repertoire from various styles and genres. On the recital were two jazz standards supported by full jazz combo, a vocal quartet in which I sang bass, and a classical piece which I wrote for my saxophone quartet. This recital showcases fluency in vastly different styles, which required flexibility in how I (and my collaborators) approached each piece.