I was born in Edmon­ton, Canada, in 1980. I received my Bach­e­lor of Music with Hon­ours from the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto (2005), and my Master’s degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego (2007). I have also pur­sued stud­ies at the Konin­klijk Con­ser­va­to­rium in the Hague, Nether­lands. My teach­ers have included Chan Ka Nin, Chi­nary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Mar­tijn Padding, among oth­ers. In addi­tion, I have par­tic­i­pated in mas­ter­classes with com­posers such as Gilles Trem­blay, Mario Davi­dovsky, Denys Bou­liane, François Paris, and Hel­mut Lachen­mann. Prior to study­ing com­po­si­tion, I stud­ied jazz drum­ming and Cuban folk­loric per­cus­sion, which took to me to Havana for a sum­mer of pri­vate study in 2002.

I have had per­for­mances and com­mis­sions from ensem­bles in sev­eral coun­tries, includ­ing the Nieuw Ensem­ble, the Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Mon­treal, the Nou­vel ensem­ble mod­erne, the Uni­ver­sity of Alberta’s Acad­emy String Orches­tra, Tapes­try New Opera Works, Toca Loca, Con­tin­uum, the Knights Orches­tra, and the Arditti Quar­tet. My music has been per­formed in Canada, the USA, Cuba, the UK, Ger­many, and the Nether­lands. Radio broad­casts include CBC Radio 2, Radio-Canada’s Espace musique, and Toronto’s CIUT.

My music has been pre­sented in fes­ti­vals such as Amsterdam’s Gaudea­mus Music Week (my piece Cul­ture no.1 was selected for their 2006 com­pe­ti­tion), Toronto’s New Wave, soundaXis, and SHIFT fes­ti­vals; Aberdeen’s Sound Fes­ti­val; and New York’s MATA Fes­ti­val. I was addi­tion­ally selected as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Canada in the 2008 World Music Days in Lithua­nia. One of my solo pieces, Flüsse-Einflüsse, was cho­sen as a required exam piece for the grad­u­at­ing accor­dion stu­dents at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Trossin­gen in 2006. I have also received var­i­ous awards and grants, includ­ing four prizes in Canada’s SOCAN Awards for Young Com­posers (2004, 2004, 2006, 2008), a SOCAN res­i­dency grant, two grad­u­at­ing schol­ar­ships from U of T, as well as com­mis­sion­ing, travel, project, and study grants from the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts and the Alberta Foun­da­tion for the Arts.

Some excit­ing news. I’ve received fund­ing to develop a musi­cal project that I have been plan­ning for sev­eral years. It involves writ­ing an evening-length piece for ampli­fied instru­ments, to be per­formed in non-traditional venues such as night­clubs. This is a large-scale project that I will be work­ing on over the remain­der of the year. More infor­ma­tion to be posted as the work progresses.