I was born in in New York, and raised in Brooklyn. Like many baby boomers, my earliest musical experiences were playing electric guitar in neighborhood rock and roll garage bands. We played cover versions of the latest music we heard on the local rock radio stations.
I learned most of this music by rote - listening repeatedly to successive fragments of a recording until I was able to accurately replicate them on the guitar. This was my first attempt at getting inside a piece of music. My formal musical training was primarily in and around colleges and universities. I began formal music study at the Mannes College of Music B.
Mannes's curriculum was modeled on that of a traditional European music conservatory. It was completely different from my previous informal music training and was a totally new world for me. My first-year music theory teacher, Eric Richards, was a composer. He remained a mentor, close friend and colleague of mine until his death in Eric was an extraordinary teacher and he turned that class into something much more than the usual general introduction to the prescribed rules of harmony.
He introduced me to the world of avant-garde music. His teaching and guidance, as well as his own visionary compositions and compositional thought, exposed me to a vast new musical landscape. He opened up a whole new world of sound and forms of expression that inspired me to begin composing. Subsequently, I changed my focus from classical guitar to music theory. The two music theory subjects that were of particular interest to me at Mannes were Species Counterpoint and Schenker Analysis.
I continue to be influenced compositionally by the attention each brings to bear on voice-leading and the ways in which the musical surface is related to its skeletal underpinnings.
