Encinitas, California has been my home since 1996. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri but attended junior high school and high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1979 The Santa Fe Chamber Orchestra conducted a music composition competition when they were in residence with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The American composer John Harbison chose my jazz string quartet for first prize. With the help of a composition scholarship, I attended The Banff Centre of Fine Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada. I also studied classical piano with Suzanne Szekely from Vienna, Austria at The Cornish School of Arts in Seattle, Washington. In Milwaukee, I studied with Alvina Sinneps from Lithuania at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. My jazz teachers were Jack Percival, pianist and arranger for The Harry James Orchestra and Kamau Kenyatta, from UCSD, University of California, San Diego. I’ve been a private piano teacher since I moved to Encinitas.

During my high school years in the late 1960’s, I played organ in a psychedelic rock band named Our Mothers’ Children, also known as The Children. We performed in Detroit as a warm up band for famous rock bands at the Grande Ballroom and we performed at teen night clubs throughout the state of Michigan. We also played once or twice each week-end in our home town of Ann Arbor at fraternity parties at the University of Michigan.

I lived in Latin America for 9 years, performing with The Jerry Michelsen Trio, mostly in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and San Juan, Puerto Rico. My jazz trio also performed throughout the Caribbean, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Las Vegas, and other parts of the United States. We played on five cruise ships and we spent a total of 2 years performing at sea. My languages are Spanish and English.