Bio
It all started in Las Vegas, Nevada when I was about 6 years old. My father came home one day with a violin for me. I didn't ask for it, but I began taking lessons and it ended up having an indelible effect on my life.
About 3 years later we left Las Vegas and the violin lessons ended. Shortly thereafter I discovered the synthesizer—a Prophet V to be exact—and I started to figure out the melodies from popular songs back then by ear. I had a gift and I was encouraged to take piano lessons.
It was 1985 when I took my first piano lessons. My piano teacher would sometimes scold me for playing by ear rather than reading the sheetmusic. I fell in love with the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff, among others, but I was also developing an appreciation for contemporary genres that made use of synthesizers—electronic, new age, classical crossover, synth pop, and new wave.
Artists such as Vangelis, Depeche Mode, OMD, Thompson Twins, Peter Gabriel, and Isao Tomita had a lasting impact on my appreciation for the synthesizer as a tool of almost infinite creative and compositional possibilities, but with the passage of time I began to grow a fondness for the pianist and singer-songwriter superpowers of artists such as Elton John and Billy Joel.