Artist Statement

I use storytelling and performance to investigate spirituality, imagination, choices, culture, and history.  My art inspires people to engage with new ideas about how to live and how to think. 

 

Sound creation is my primary method of affecting the emotions and senses and suggesting stories to people’s minds.  I employ the virtuosic use of multiple instruments (especially the cornet/trumpet and electronic wind instrument/EWI), sound design, and sampling to create transformative sonic environments and intricate soundscapes.  Composition, improvisation, and spontaneous composition play a central role in these acts of sound creation; I am actively juxtaposing musical and non-musical traditions from around the world to produce my signature style.

 

I relate to sound and music visually, meaning I equate sound to visuals and movements.  For this reason, I often collaborate with dancers who understand my interactive/visual language of improvisation through sound.  I also use video and new media to create visual stimuli in conversation with my sound-based works.  The video elements can range from crude, handmade figurines and miniature sets, to staged “reenactment” footage, to aerial drone and GoPro videography of nature that is heavily processed (oftentimes) beyond recognition of the captured landscapes.  My use of new media alongside my soundscapes helps the audience imagine another world through manipulation of images of the “real” world which we all inhabit.