I was born in Manhattan in 1979, but my family moved to northern Virginia when I was two, so I can’t really claim to be a New Yorker. In middle school, I found my calling — not music, but mathematics. I devoured textbooks, took advanced courses at an academic summer program, and excelled at various math competitions, at regional, national, and international levels. Back when I started out on the competition circuit in seventh grade, I was also playing trombone in the school band, but that was just a hobby.
Then marching band came along in high school, and music became a time-consuming hobby. Also, I switched to bass trombone in concert band, and as I qualified for better bands, I was exposed to better music, and better music-making, both in the classical microcosm of concert band music and in the world of big-band jazz. And I really got into the music. From my seat at the end of the trombone section, I could see almost everyone else in the band, and I became fascinated with how all the different instrumental parts came together. Sometimes I got frustrated when the music didn’t come together the way I knew it should; I wanted to play everyone’s parts so they could be up to my standards. I knew that was impossible, but that didn’t stop me from teaching myself to play piano, flute, tuba, and clarinet on the side. But if I wanted to make the music bend to my whim, I figured I’d have to be either a composer or a conductor. Conducting seemed like a job, but composing was something I could do in my spare time when I wasn’t doing whatever I should end up doing as a mathematician.
When I went off to college in North Carolina, I knew for certain I was going to double-major in mathematics and music. Unfortunately, I had bad luck with the first math class I took as a freshman — not that it was a class I did poorly in, but that it was a class I found dull. I went on an extended medical leave the semester after that, and I decided that maybe upper-level research mathematics just wasn’t as interesting to me as the sort of problems I had to solve in competitions. At the same time, the more I studied music, the more I was fascinated by it. When I resumed classes, math was no longer my top priority. I didn’t get to start taking composition lessons for another year, but I built up my chops by arranging jazz charts for
At that point, I knew enough about composition to know that I didn’t know enough about composition, (though now I know that a composer never knows enough about composition, at least, not enough to stop learning) so I went the to Boston area to study composition for a couple of years in grad school. Again, I was fortunately to have a really great teacher, who helped me deal with compositional challenges and creative droughts without being judgmental or meddling. I also further expanded my performing horizons to include small-ensemble jazz and experimental music, and I played a lot of new compositions, both by my peers and by my own hand. And I wound up enjoying it so much in Massachusetts, despite the nasty winters, that I decided to stay.
Now I live in Cambridge, and I write music and I play music. Apart from that, I’m a geek. I love learning about the world, being surprised by it and giving others surprises. I am perhaps obsessed with puzzles — both word puzzles and really complex, unclassifiable puzzle…things. And, as an indulgence to the past that I never left behind, I always make time to go teach advanced math classes at a familiar academic summer program.