Myself and Juno award winning producer, jazz bassist and composer Rick Kilburn, are currently deep in the process of recording my first album. I’m so grateful to be working with Rick, as he has become a good friend and mentor of mine.

In the past 15 years, I have been writing music non-stop, and I can’t wait to begin to share it with the world now that I feel ready to do so.

The debut album will be a multi-tracked project featuring my singing, saxophone, piano, and flute playing, as well as my compositions, arrangements, and lyrics. Rick will be featured playing bass. 

I never thought I would be a multi-instrumentalist when I was just a saxophone player. For the first 8 years of my musical training, I was obsessed with 50s and 60s jazz, and I was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to much else. I realized as I got older, that expanding my musicianship by learning new skills and sounds is the only way I’m going to authentically tell stories. You can’t influence your sound 100% and you shouldn’t try to; some of what you become… it just IS!

I have taken the time to examine my motives and my mission as an artist, while learning how to wield the magic of music through traditions, rituals, and sound advice from many mentors. Music has always been the facilitator of my emotions, the bringer of joy, happiness, excitement, sorrow, grief, pain, contentedness, love... I don’t think I would know how to be myself, or how to allow others to be themselves without resistance to newness, if I didn’t allow music and its traditions to show me how. It turns out that no feeling is too great or too painful to experience; we are capable of being with our entire human experience, if we allow ourselves to persevere despite how difficult it can be.

Through painstaking practice and continued healing, life has become an ever-expanding journey that is only limited by my own imagination. Through Kenton’s Lesson Studio, I am able to share what I have learned about all of this with the next generation; I am so grateful to be in that position. I would not trade it for anything. My students are a priceless source of inspiration.

I am especially excited to release this album, as the songs will include my own original lyrics which have been written and developed during formative years. From saxophone lessons in elementary school, to festivals in high school, and then a chaotic and eye-opening college experience, to covid times and recovery from trauma… My songs will reflect and represent how I coped with it all, and how I changed.

Lyrics are of great importance to me. I think a lot of instrumental music lacks that extra social impact because of the absence of them. When I sing my music, it is like repeating an affirmation; it helps with the process of letting go and starting anew. Plus, a lot of the jazz standards and folk songs, although well known to a large audience, are completely unknown to others, so perhaps it’s necessary to introduce these as well with singers more often, so we can continue to pass these beautiful stories on to the next generation for the first time, over and over again.