About Me

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Hi there, thanks for stopping by my website!

I am a retired Middle and High School Instrumental Music Teacher, having taught music in Canada's capital, Ottawa, for over 25 years.

I began learning music at an early age, playing the piano accordion throughout elementary school. I began playing trumpet in middle school and continued throughout high school and my undergraduate years, completing my B. Mus. in Theory and Composition and B. Ed. in Music (Instrumental and Vocal) at the University of Western Ontario in London, ON.

Additionally, I have always been enamored with the piano and, after a few years of study, began performing as a teenager. Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to work in many different types of musical settings and styles, but especially enjoy working as an accompanist for soloists or small groups of singers and instrumentalists.

While still in high school, I made my first few musical arrangements. One of my earliest arrangements was of a Bach Chorale (O Sacred Head, Now Wounded) created for my school's concert band. I revisited this arrangement recently and the results can be found here.

After university I moved to Ottawa to teach Instrumental Music for the OCSB and later the OCDSB. In total I taught 25 years. During this time I developed some skill in using Finale to engrave music. I occasionally made transcriptions/arrangements for my students, including a beginner concert band arrangement of 'O Canada'.

I have recently relocated back to the National Capital Region after 4 years in Niagara. I am looking forward to taking on the new challenges and opportunities that await me now that I have finally been able to move back home. I continue to spend most of my days practicing, teaching and working on new musical arrangements - realizing a lifelong dream to devote a significant amount of time to improving these skills. I am proud of the arranging work that I have done over the past 2 years or so and I am also beginning to appreciate the tangible results of my daily practice routine on my piano performance skills.

I hope you find the musical arrangements presented on this website to be useful, whether for student instruction or for use on gigs. Although I try my best to present accurate, playable scores, sometimes I find typos (or even just bone-headed errors) in my work. Please feel free to contact me with any comments or suggestions.

I am always on the lookout for suitable material to arrange. For example, my arrangement of "Guys and Dolls" was created at the request of a good friend. "One Hand, One Heart" from West Side Story was arranged for my own wedding back in the late '90s. Less said about that the better...

Whenever possible, however, I prefer to work on music that is already in the public domain or, occasionally, original compositions.

Once in a while, I get out from behind my studio piano and computer and perform music in a live setting. A few 'random' performance samples from over the years: