A musician, producer, composer, arranger, and pianist who just released a 16-song Christmas album at the end of October. From that project alone, one song has over a million streams on Spotify, another has more than 1.6 million streams, and yet a third has 2.6 million. He has collaborated with artists ranging from Chicago to Spyro Gyra to Tower of Power. He also spent a number of years in radio – both on and off the air – as well as an online streaming platform, reaching a worldwide audience of six million listeners in a single year. He is the owner of record label Studio 55 and says that he makes music to inspire and unite.
“Like all good songs they never die they just decompose… Sometimes things don’t work out and you can’t focus on what’s not working, you gotta focus on what’s next and what you’re processing in your mind.”
“Everyone is looking for a break and the best way to try your craft and see how things work is shadowing yourself on someone else’s work and then see how it goes. And I guess to some degree as an experiment, but it’s nice when the experiments work.”
“The listener has to be engaged. And nothing is more tedious, and nothing is more boring than to sit and listen to an album and go, ‘Okay, I’ll just skip that track.’ I don’t want people to have to skip something.”
“I was taught this very, very early on by a teacher I had in a performing arts school that I went to as part of my high school day… This gentleman was bass player for… Frank Sinatra, and the one thing he said, is that ‘If you never, if you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever not pick up your instrument or for some reason you just stop playing, always keep on listening’.”
“These artists were inspired by someone to lay down what’s on their heart and on their mind, and it’s our job as listeners and followers of music and creators of music to interpret what their message is.”
“When it comes to approaching a project or an idea, I like to generally take a consensus of the musicians that I’m working with and say, ‘Okay, this is my idea, what do you think’?”
“Music is slowly getting back to what it used to be. The last ten, fifteen years, things have been at a standstill. And if you’re over the age of 30, you’re used to basically what you grew up with.”
“If ya’ just don’t feel it, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“So, I applied and got not only a four-year music scholarship but also got my post grad as well on scholarship.”
“A bunch of friends of mine and I were playing around, and we used to make fun of this one gentleman who would be practicing his guitar at the local gas station. And he’s in the bay and he’s practicing, and we’d go get our gas and off to the gig making fun of him. Until that one morning where you turn on the television set and there’s this video, and that gentleman is John Mayer. So, never make fun of anyone, always be humble, and never be cocky.”
“The pandemic was like, okay, how can I refocus or rebrand myself… so I decided to start my own label and bring people underneath that.”
“It’s a Magic Day”
“Christmas in My Heart”