MUSICAL Bio

I am a musician, certified music therapist, teacher, performer, and songwriter. Deriving my musical style from decades of studying classical technique, traditional New Orleans folk jazz, sailing on schooners, and years of travel through folk music circles as an itinerant agricultural and labor worker.

From disciplined beginnings to an unexpected voyage

I am the daughter of a nurse and Marine Corps pilot. My identical twin sister and I grew up along the southeastern coast of the USA with two older identical twin brothers. I took up the clarinet at age 10 and during my grade school years studied classical technique daily for a decade. Adrift for some years and working day labor jobs in Florida, at age 22 I gave up all of my possessions— except a clarinet, a djembe drum, and a tent— got on a bicycle and pedaled to Key West.

For some months in the year 2000 I lived in a boat yard and played clarinet on the streets after midnight. There, I met an artist and sailor who became a life-changing mentor. I always called him my “Captain”. He taught me to sail, cook, sing, and play guitar and banjo aboard his hand-made gaff-rigged schooner. After four years of sailing and musical apprenticeship from the Caribbean Sea to the eastern seaboard, I joined a long-standing fiddle band —with the Sun Mountain Fiddler, Dick Solberg— as the bass player. For four years I toured the Virgin Islands and the Northeast performing on bass, clarinet, sax, and vocals. During those eight years of sailing and touring with the fiddle band I also labored on vineyards, orchards, and construction sites.

It was time to go back to school. At age thirty, I moved to Florida and earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy from FSU in Tallahassee. I am currently a board-certified music therapist (MT-BC) and musical performer in Key West, Florida. I perform vintage jazz, folk, and rock’n’roll with a handful of talented musicians in the Caribbean, the Northeastern USA, and Key West, Florida.