I was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and spent most of my childhood in Baltimore, Maryland. My parents were both musicians, and I took after them. I was a student at The University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music, and received a Bachelor of Music degree from there in 1982. I also attended The Walden School, a summer program for young composers, in Dublin, New Hampshire. I went to Cambridge University, where I got my MPhil degree in 1983. In between, I was a Fellowship Student at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, studying with the American composer and conductor, Gunther Schuller.

I've written chamber music, piano music, orchestral works including a tone poem called Lucé Veneziana (Venetian Light), a large work for 2 pianos and percussion ensemble called Martellare (Italian for ‘Struck’), song cycles and one opera (unfinished, with libretto adapted from a play by Franz Kafka). I've included recordings of 3 works above: I wrote the Song without Words as a gift for my father's 80th birthday and he performs it on this recording. The other pieces are the Capriccio for Five Trumpets, and a Barcarolle for Solo Harp, written for the Canadian Harpist Deborah Nyack.

I got interested in computers and technology in 1987 and worked as a User Experience Designer for about 20 years. I wrote 2 books on computers: Cool Mac Stacks (1992), and The QuickTime Handbook (1993), both published by Hayden Books.

After living for about 15 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my wife, Pam and I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where we now live and have since become Canadian citizens. I've now gone back to school, and am a Graduate Student in Music Composition at the University of British Columbia, where I’ll be pursuing my Doctorate in Composition.