Bio
As a kid I was surrounded by music. My father is a record producer, my mother is a singer and my grandmother was an early 60's pop star named Sue Thompson who performed alongside my grandfather, the singer songwriter Hank Penny. At a young age music was a prominent part in my life. In my early years of being a kid, I lived in the attic apartment of Air Studios in London during the early 90's. At this period both musicians and film composers came to Air to record their work, even though I was young I believe that period had a great impact on me musically.
After being in London, my family moved back to Ojai, California where my parents worked on their own record, Poperetta, and a series of other albums for various artists. During the time that my parents were recording Poperetta I began playing music more and more. Taking up the drums first, my interest became a passion. From there, I started branching out to other instruments like guitar, bass and eventually piano, while simultaneously beginning to write my own material. I wrote my first song when I was 10 and have been constantly writing since.
For my education, I went to Oak Grove School in Ojai, a school founded by Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, who said "There is no end to education ... from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning". During my later years at Oak Grove I was given the opportunity to play music for a couple hours during the school day. As a result, my group and I entered into a regional high school battle of the bands and won four consecutive years. After graduating I had not only built my confidence as a musician but had also written enough songs to record a full length LP, which was recorded in late 2009-2010 under the name Twin Trip.
The Twin Trip record was released independently in 2012 along with three music videos. The videos were filmed and directed by myself and Micah Van Hove (who played drums on the Twin Trip record) and were edited and written by myself. The record was very well received, and was featured on iTunes “Indie Spotlight” and “New & Noteworthy” and many other music blogs. Additionally the album received high rotation college radio airplay on 125 US stations and top 30 on 12 of those stations.
During the build up to the Twin Trip release, I simultaneously began pursuing a long lasting interest in scoring. I had done work in film before, during high school I worked with Caroline Thompson (writer of "Nightmare Before Christmas and "Edward Scissorhands") and Steve Nicolaides (line producer for "School of Rock" and "A Few Good Men") on the score for a short that they produced. That was my first experience putting music to picture and I loved it. So when I found myself free from school and done with the recording process of my first record, I started working on scores as well.
Since then I've composed and performed scores for a number of short films, and worked as a film music editor on the feature film "A Most Wanted Man" which is going to be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year. During the beginning of the new year, I'll be in the studio again, completing my next LP while also pursuing continued work as a composer in the film industry.
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