I remember the one item that first made me love music: a 45 RPM record named Apple of My Eye (by Roy Head, Back Beat 555, 1966). It’s long gone. The neighbor girl, who was a couple of years older, had learned all the musical symbols, and taught them to me. I still know most of them.

In the fourth grade I started clarinet lessons with the local band director. If not for that, I wouldn’t have learned to read music very well. (Thanks, Steve Ritzenthaler, wherever you are.)

Jazz discovered me in high school. Down Beat magazine had many stories and reviews about two new hot young players: Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius. (You can figure the date from that.) I bought records by Pat and Weather Report. I still have them on CD. A friend introduced me to Miles Davis. His record Big Fun sounded like another world. It still does.

I went to college to study composition. I didn't know it then, but I had nothing to say. For a long time after, composition was just an abstract exercise until I thought: What if they let James Bond die in the film? Then it becomes a film about something else, doesn’t it? This was my first exposure to authorship.

But I wasn’t ready to play music, apparently. I avoided playing music by stumbling into the record industry, where I moved around a lot, made some money, made just a few (lasting) friends, but played no music. The music industry got tired of me and invited me to my future, which was elsewhere. Soon after, I got real and admitted that I wanted to do nothing else but be musical. I went back to school, this time to get serious about jazz, playing it, writing it, learning what it really was. This helped a lot.

In May 2004, I received my MM in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas. I got to play with a lot of incredibly good musicians there. In August 2004 I took a position (as a sabbatical replacement) in the music department of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. I enjoy the culture shock of Canada. I hope Canada enjoys the culture shock of me, too.