i make music as a form of documentation. i love every form of it: recording, journaling, photography, video. any thing that shows the era we are alive and is proof of existence. i love collaborating with others and learning from them and sharing. it is a beautiful synergy of collective energy. i always feel like the experiences i share with other artists are so special and deserve to be preserved in time. the background noise is document to the technology. the type of cars passing, the creaking of old wooden floors. it sounds and feels like brooklyn, los angeles, or tokyo. i have an album out called moon set, moon rise which i really wanted to record the room and creaks, the cars passing by. i wanted you to feel the hot summer brooklyn days, the cold winters where your feet are always cold. on my solo album ‘quiet scenes from tokyo’ i wanted to do an escapist album where you feel like you’re in nature in peace. i was going through life’s hardships and rented a small studio across from a 6 story freeway.

after sharing collaborations for a year +, i want people to feel inspired to feel like they can fly on their own. a sense of self empowerment. i want to show that artists are not special they just go through the motions of practice, capturing, editing, producing and releasing. just following basic steps. it is not “hard” but it is the hardest part to do it.

i try to notice what everyone is trying to say. i notice the types of lines people are playing, the volume or space they leave. the form or no form they are trying to create. i feel like team sports is the perfect analogy to jamming. everyone has to find their role whether it be a lead role, someone doing dirty work, offense, defense, getting rebounds. two people can be playing melodies but not all the time. it is important to find your role. bass lines, chordal, supplemental. it is important to know when and how to step up for each position.

journals to me are a way of printing important ideas. i often hang out with people i admire. i want them to appear in my journal in hopes that someday someone can read that this person was having a tough time with money or love. we are all normal people going through normal hardships. i write everything stream of conscious so bad thoughts come out that need to come out, good ideas are re-inforced. writing an idea down prints it from ephemeral to physical. the more important it is the more i’ll be keen on writing it day after day.

tokyo is where i live right now. it offers the highest ceiling for happiness to me. it offers a walkable city, with a language i don’t fully understand. it is fun to learn the language and the language feels like memorizing music and phrases by john coltrane. it doesn’t sound like anything at first, but the more familiar you become it feels like you have a super power to slow down time. recognize words with in phrases and eventually entire phrases. it is beautiful, scary and exciting all at once.

going back to my sports analogy, i feel like cello is an uncommon position in sports. the cello can be an amazing lead player, it can be supplemental, chordal, bass. i think of it as a ‘draymond green’ of basketball. it can play offense when needed, it can get rebounds, play defense, it can play point guard. it is extremely versatile and often times needs to be the best listener in the group because there is not a conventional position for it to play outside of classical music.

19 years based in New York City. 16 years freelancing. Now based in Tokyo. Also teaching privately — cello, writing, production, composing, improvising, recording.

jeen-yuhs, Episodes 1–3 — Netflix

Life After Baywatch, Episodes 1–4 — Hulu

Soul Patrol — Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Sundance (Kino Lorber)

Beam Me Up Sulu — Tribeca Film Festival

The Great Experiment — IFC Center

Boy From St. Croix — Austin Film Festival

Quiet Scenes From Tokyo — Faitiche (solo album)

Moon Set, Moon Rise — Futura Resistenza (3rd repress)

MoMA (NYC) — with Caroline Polachek

Guggenheim — with Emily Wells

Smithsonian American History Museum — with Emily Wells

Bourse de Commerce — with L'Rain

Human Error Club, Melody Fest

Niecy Blues at In Sheep's Clothing

Black Decelerant at 2220 Arts + Archives

Gal Nissim art installation at JCC

Composed music for Sue Huang at Fridman (Danny Meyer, woodwind; Nolan Thies, mixing)

Matt Mallinger, opening for Bendik Giske

Jacob Jonas — two nights at Kirk Douglas Theatre

Guest DJ set at Dublab with Rani and Patrick Shiroishi

Dublab show with Colloboh and TP Dutchkiss

Meakusma Festival, Eupen, BE

Hosoi, Stockholm, SE

f/eks, Oslo, NO

Botanique, Brussels, BE

Onze Ambassade Festival, The Hague, NL

Murmur, Amsterdam, NL

Silent Green, Berlin, DE

King Georg, Cologne, DE

Annahstasia, Hollywood Forever

American Artist / Pioneer Works, with William Alexander

Pioneer Works, Caroline Polachek

Minaret shows (Miriam El Hajli, duos)

13-year Live Footage residency at Apotheke, NYC's most exclusive night club

Residency at Tea, at Shiloh