Writing short bios for a website is hard, as they so easily come off as pompous and self-important. I shall try not do that, but I fear I may fail. Please forgive me.
I started this website about 15 years ago, with the intention that it would be devoted to all my work in music composition. It has since slowly evolved into a website about everything I’m interested in: playing piano and trombone; composing music; traveling; and television, especially a little show you might have heard of called Heartstopper. I’m particularly proud of my travel blog, many of the entries recounting adventures with my best friend, Amy Danielson, her partner Aaron, my mother Audry, my sister Marie, her husband Shawn, and my boyfriend Matt.
My formal training is in music, and I have way too many degrees: a B.S. degree in music education from Winona State University and an M.M. degree and a D.M.A. degree in music composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I studied with Laura Schwendinger and the late Stephen Dembski. While music hasn’t become my sustaining vocation (something I’m really quite okay with, as leaving the toxic elitism of higher education behind me feels glorious), I still write and perform. I enjoy working especially with visual artist Matt Semke, and we are both quite proud of a little film we made called Betwixt, which has made the rounds at various film festivals in Europe, Canada, and the United States. I also perform trombone with the Minneapolis Trombone choir and piano with my amazing friends, Elizabeth, Courtney, and Angela, in a lovely little quartet called Breaking Glass.
I live in Minneapolis with my incredible boyfriend and our three lovely cats, and by day I work in non-profit administration at LifeSource, an organ procurement organization for Minnesota, the Dakotas, and parts of western Wisconsin.
I can’t tell where this bio lands on the pompous and self-important scale. Please let me know if it’s scoring too high and I shall endeavor to fix that.