I was born in a log house on the shore of Red Cedar Lake, Wisconsin, on August fourth 1984. I liked to sing a lot as a small child, especially when riding in the car. I made up tunes as I went along. You wouldn’t call them regular tunes, more like very abstract strange sounds woven together. They didn’t make a lot of sense to others, but must have to me as I kept on doing it for years. I didn’t actually start to play an instrument until a bit later, starting with the flute and then the violin. One of my older sisters was living in Prague and bought a beautiful old violin for me with a carved lions head on it. I really liked playing it but had some trouble with playing in ordinary tuning, sort of like my singing as a small child.

 

In learning to play the violin, I played a lot of what might be termed as free notes that bent the limits of the twelve tone western system. The English concertina has the same range of notes as the violin. Except that the notes were fixed by the tuning and they could only be bent a little with bellows pressure. This helped me a lot to play regular music, which I have come to love as much as the stranger sounds that still live inside of me. It is a little like speaking to different languages. I think in some way this influences what I do and what I hear when I play.

 

I played for the Wisconsin State Music competitions held in various counties of the State in 1999 and received a top score for my playing, though the judges had never had anyone play the concertina before. At 16, I graduated from high school and received a small, but very important music scholarship award from the Ashland, Wisconsin, Music Boosters. That fall I went to study music in Holland at the Fontys Conservatory in Tilburg, Holland where they had offered a study program for the classical style of concertina. While there, I also attended classes at an Art school in Tilburg. It was suggested that I apply for entrance to the Fine Art Academy in The Hague, Netherlands. I was accepted and studied there for the next two years.

 

I supported myself in Holland by posing for art classes, painting houses, designing and sewing clothes, caring for children, illustrating music books and anything I could find to do.

 

Meanwhile, my parents moved to France and when I finished my studies in Holland I went to live with them. From the big city to the country side. While in France I attended an accordion Festival and heard Natalie Bouche play. She was the director of a special French accordion school not far from where we lived. I was accepted and attended the school for several months. While at the accordion school I was encouraged to play in the style that I now do, by a wonderful player and composer, Sebastian Farge. It was he who wondered why I didn’t play more notes at the same time on my instrument and though I only managed to take two lessons from him, they were very important lessons.

 

I like to busk on the streets as this gives me a chance to play for people and to see their reaction to my music. It was really scary at first, and still is, but it can be fun too and it has paid for our groceries more than once.

I recently moved to Germany, the Concertina brought me here and I am continuing on the road of musical discovery.