Starting as a wee child, I was constantly smacking my hands on the family piano. My mom eventually put me into piano lessons at age five, figuring that if I was going to hit a bunch of piano keys, some of them should probably be the right notes. I studied classical music because nothing woos the crowd like some dank Chopin preludes, and eventually became everyone’s accompanist in high school when they wanted to sing Christina Aguilara’s “Beautiful” in the school recitals. I joined choir as well, as all the cool kids do, and did what every piano player does when they join choir – run all the warmups and play half the tunes on piano instead!
Eventually I went to a music conservatory for a year where I learned I’d rather play pop tunes than Bach, and transferred up to Boston for college to study music business. At some point walking by Fenway Park, I heard the dulcet tunes of Sara Bareilles being played live from what I soon discovered was a piano bar. “G minor, I could do that,” she said to herself as she walked by and made plans to go in at a later point (which she never did).
After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, I soon started playing at a dueling piano bar at Universal City, and realized with the lowbrow sense of humor and musical idiocy, I was going to fit in just right. Since then I’ve been playing in piano bars across the country, and in cover bands at every theme park in the Southern California region. I feel very lucky to be able to play music for a living, especially when someone requests that weird, offbeat song and I get to play it and watch them go crazy and sing along.
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