Around the time that God was a little girl, I decided to become a musician. So, a very long time ago!
My first instrument was the trumpet, which I played from fourth grade through high school, a bit in college, and about once a year after that. As you can imagine, the "once-a-year" bit did nothing for my technique and my lips were always shot after about a minute of playing. Definitely, not the instrument for me.
My older sister began playing piano when she was in second grade. My mother managed to buy one of those old upright pianos from our elementary school and she always tells the story of how it cost more to move it than buy it. With the piano now in the house, I could tinker around on it at will and my sister was a great first teacher, although I didn't begin formal lessons until halfway through fifth grade. That old warhorse of a piano, made sometime around 1899, lasted through high school, college and well beyond. My mother eventually replaced, long after we'd left home. It suffered many broken strings and tunings, but it did the job it needed to do. They sure don't make 'em like that anymore.
My sister quit taking lessons in high school, but I continued all the way. Early in my senior year, my mother asked "John, do you want to stop taking lessons? You never practice." I replied "Well, I was actually thinking of going to college for music."
My mother's question should have alerted me to just how hard it might be to be a music major and launch a subsequent career. I mean, I practiced. Kind of. When I felt like it. Sometimes for as much as 30 minutes! Couldn't she see how devoted I was to this?
Somehow, I was accepted into the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York, Potsdam and started down a path I could have never imagined. The aftermath of every piano lesson for my first three semesters of found me in tears after hearing my professor, the late great Frank Iogha, utter such things as "How did you get in this college? Who did you audition for?" (Him) Or "If you're not going to be serious about this, you should give it up and become a psychology major or something."
Eventually, I realized just what it would take to be a professional musician and started cracking down on myself. The formerly generous 30 minutes of daily practice soon grew into about 6 hours. I came to love Frank and almost stayed passed graduation to keep studying with him. He was hard on me, but he needed to be. During my last lesson, he told me, "When you got here, I didn't think you had a musical bone in your body. Now I sometimes think you have too many." Although I wasn't a voice major, I took lessons, first with Anitra Lynch and then Lois Vacarriello. I was also fortunate enough to study harp with Arlene Wangler and still play from time to time.
Between Frank's tutelage and the accompanying work I did in the voice studio of Patricia Misslin (the great teacher of such notable performers as Renee Fleming, Stephanie Blythe, Lisa Vroman and more,) I had turned into a real musician.
The problem was, I had burned myself out. My father lived in Hawai'i at the time and invited me to move there after graduation. I wanted to go someplace warm, get out of northern New York, (where I had spent nearly my entire life,) and find a place to come out. I also wanted to do something, anything, other than music. My father could even give me a job.
It took me 13 months in Hawai'i before I even touched a piano again, and boy, those first days back were a challenge. What were my fingers supposed to do again? I'm grateful to the multi-talented Beebe Freitas, (who played at the church I attended at the time,) for arranging a practice place for me at the church and for somehow tracking me down at the law firm where I worked to ask if I would sub for her and accompany a rehearsal of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus. That rehearsal was a disaster. I simply wasn't ready to read oratorio open-scores and orchestral reductions. Nevertheless, this set me on my path as a career musician.
I had started work on an MBA at the University of Hawai'i and, after a couple classes realized that I cared nothing for marketing trends, financial reports or really, anything business-related. Snoozeville. I switched my major to music and had the fortune of studying piano with Edward Shipwright (who had some of the same teachers at Julliard as Frank Iogha) and voice with Laurence Paxton and John Mount.
I graduated and spent a couple more years in Hawai'i, working as a full-time musician. I played for a couple of churches, went door-to-door and taught private lessons, did some accompanying and was the founding accompanist and second artistic director of the Honolulu Men's Chorus.
The "coming out" part was working nicely too. By the time I entered grad school, I was on to my second partner and relationship. Kalei was a wonderful man and I still love him deeply. A year after he died from AIDS, I made the decision to move to San Francisco, land of artists and gayness.
The first couple of years were a tough adjustment. While a friend had promised me "there are tons of music jobs in San Francisco, it's full of artists," I discovered that yes, it's full of artists, really full, and they all compete for the jobs that are there. You can't turn around without seeing something carrying their guitar case, trumpet case, flute case or whatever.
I began temping and landed what became a permanent job with what is now the San Francisco Chronicle. My job in advertising was fun and mostly fulfilling, but it wasn't music. I started finding jobs where I could moonlight, such as directing the Jewish Folk Chorus of San Francisco, teaching a handful of lessons and playing for a church. After a long period of being promised great things at the newspaper, which never materialized, I again took the leap into being a full-time musician. It took a while, but most anything that's worth it does.
I ended up staying in the Bay Area for the better part of 17 years (with a brief move to LA and an ever briefer one month move to Ft. Lauderdale) and honed my craft. I worked everywhere. My mother remembers that I had 13 different jobs at one point. I try to remember what they all were but the best I can narrow it down to was playing for two churches, teaching voice at a local music center, having my own students, coaching singers at Barbizon (yes, that Barbizon), playing for various musicals, playing for weddings and parties, singing some opera (favorite role was Ferrando in Cosi fan Tutte, although I did play Robert Shallow in the world-premiere production of Gordon Getty's Plumpjack,) and being the tenor soloist for oratorios like Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass and Beethoven's Mass in C with the Solano Symphony. At one point I was the accompanist and assistant director with the Oakland/East Bay Gay Men's Chorus, taught voice for a hot minute at the Oakland School for the Arts and made a horrible attempt to teach voice to children at a private elementary school.
I loved San Francisco and still do. However, in 2012 I had the chance to move back to Hawai'i and jumped at it. I took over a church job for a friend who had been in place for 30 years and became the founding director of the Gay Men's Chorus of Honolulu, and later, SATBQ: The Women's Chorus of Honolulu. Eventually I held teaching positions at Hawai'i Tokai International College, Honolulu Community College and Kapi'olani Community College and pimped myself out to play for painfully low-paying Japanese tourist weddings. A guy's gotta eat!
Hawai'i didn't turn into the wonder I had hoped. My partner of 11 years put me on the plane with promises to come as soon as I was settled, and then promptly dumped me. The church job featured a hostile environment starring a congregation at war with their pastor and the men's chorus was a sea of gay drama. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
After three years there, a friend convinced me to move to the Emerald City of Seattle. Seattle was fun, but to this day is one of the lowest paying environments for musicians I have ever worked in. It's chock full of eager performers, ready to work for next-to-nothing, or sometimes nothing, just to work. This allows theatres, schools, churches, etc, to pay as low as they can. There's always someone willing to work for a pittance.
I secured a tenure track position as Professor of Choral Performance and Music Theory at a community college in Olympia. One of my favorite jobs ever, and I was good at it. Too bad that it was a three hour daily round-trip commute from Seattle with pay that didn't justify staying for more than a couple of years. I still sometimes regret leaving it, but it was what I needed then.
The rest of my time in Seattle found me playing for theatres, working for a lovely little church in Edmonds, managing a non-profit arts organization, and trying and failing to open a piano bar. The Covid pandemic was not the best environment for this to succeed.
Through all of these experiences and cities, one universal truth rang out: I wasn't really doing my own music. I was teaching others to make music. I was playing for other people's productions or choirs. I was helping other people live their dreams as musicians and artists. When was I going to make music because it's the music that fed me, excited me, challenged me....?"
During my second stint in Hawai'i, a friend advised me that I would never be happy as long as I was making everyone else's music and not my own. She was right. It's almost like my theme song is that late 70's hit I've Never Been to Me by Charlene.
So, here we are. I'm back in San Francisco and am now focused on what I love to do - make music. Music that I can't wait to start making every day. My journey has brought me to the point of making videos, recording music, composing and arranging, really learning social media and marketing (I should have stuck with that MBA after all,) and being the out & proud gay musician (he/him,), my heart and soul call me to be.
Thank you for visiting my site and supporting my art and creativity. Look around. If you like my music, I hope you'll support me by downloading an mp3, following my social media pages, telling your friends or buying some of the various things I have for sale on here from time to time. Music is the heart of the people.