While this is only my 3rd year at Gesu, I have taught band in the northeast Ohio for many years.  I am trained and qualified to teach each of the instruments that make up the band program and have 22 successful years of experience in doing so.   I have a B.A. degree in Music Education, I am licensed by the Ohio Department of Education, I'm a member of MENC (Music Educators National Conference) and OMEA (Ohio Music Education Association), and I am Virtus trained. 

I taught band at St Gabriel School (in Lake County) for the past 18 years.  Under my direction, the St. Gabriel School band program experienced nearly 10 straight years of growth - going from the 20 students that I inherited when I started there in 1993 to a high of 179 band members.  With so many students being in band there, I was able to expand the program to 5 bands: a 4th Grade Band, a 5th Grade Band, a 6th Grade Band, a Junior High Concert Band, and a Junior High Jazz Band (which plays each year at the Lakeland Jazz Festival and has performed at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the past 3 years).  My goal is to help the Gesu (a similarly sized school to St. Gabriel) band program continue to grow in numbers and quality.   I am counting on your support in this endeavor.  Together we can create a band program with a tradition of excellence, a truly special musical experience that will be a real asset to the school community for many years to come.

In addition to my teaching duties, I developed and maintain the website for the music education organization MusicAlliance and serve as the "tech guru" for the organization.   I am a coordinator for the MusicAlliance Honor Band Programs (which involve students from over 20 different Catholic schools), and I serve as a co-director of the MusicAlliance Summer Honors Band 1, MusicAlliance Christmas Honor Band, and MusicAlliance Honor Jazz Band.   In 2005, I founded "Phresh Phusion" a high school jazz ensemble that featured students from a variety of northeast Ohio high schools.  I have also served as the Basketball Pep Band director for Lake Erie College, and have performed with the Crooked River Concert Band, the Euclid Orchestral Winds (a Concert Band), and the Tri-C Civic Band.   In addition to being a music educator, I am also a nationally published composer of music for school bands - one of my songs was performed in Los Angeles at the Ceritos Center for the Performing Arts and at Disneyland.  Four of my compositions for band have been published by C. Alan Publications (please visit the Downloads & Links page to listen to demo recordings of some of my songs).  I have written songs for solo piano, jazz ensemble, and concert band.  I like to involve my band students in my music composition projects (they get to try out new songs that I have written before I send them off to publishers and sometimes give the "world premiere" performance of new compositions).  I encourage students to try composing their own music (and if a student comes up with a good song idea, I help them to adapt it for the school band and we perform it in concert).

In the little bit of spare time that I have, I love working on computers, playing the piano, listening to music (my favorite pop band is Chicago), walking and bicycling in the metroparks, watching science fiction television shows and movies (Star Trek is my favorite), and hanging out with my Jack Russell Terrier Daisy (pictured below).