Welcome To A New World of Music

Born in Chicago and growing up in Los Angeles I was fascinated by music from an early age. I listened to a lot of the greats in my home. My mother liked classical but both my mother and father grew up with the great big bands and the artists in the thirties and forties so these records were also played at home growing up.

While growing up my father loved 'The Duke' and would preach to me about how Johnny Hodges was his favorite sax player. So I heard a lot of the great Mr Hodges along with 'Lester Young' and 'Coleman Hawkins'. Around the early sixties my brother gave me an album 'Sketches of Spain' by Miles. Needless to say I played that album a lot as a little boy.

I always seemed be different in my approach to everything I did from an early age, so why would it be different for music.   So when I started playing and writing with Horace Tapscott and the Ark, I started to play and  write what I heard in the abstract before I had any musical training. So after my formal theoretical training I still tend to throw the book out of the window for a unique approach..