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Thanks for visiting my site. Here's a little bit of info about me (both professional and personal) in case you're interested. I have 9 years experience as a piano tuner and technician. My studies began with Dave Carpenter of Chicago, then president of my local chapter of the Piano Tuner's Guild and inventor of the Verituner electronic tuning device. During these early years, I also spent time with other tuners on the north side of Chicago, who helped me to lay a solid foundation in aural techniques of piano tuning over the course of the summer of 2000. I then returned to Rutgers University to begin my Junior year of studies. While in my junior and senior year studying Jazz Piano at Rutgers, I developed my tuning skills, consulting with Dave Miller the Staff piano Technican for the Mason Gross School of the Arts music program. He helped me understand how to get started in the business and has consistently been a great source of support. I continued to work with various piano stores in the New Jersey area, providing tunings for recently purchased pianos while cultivating a client base through word of mouth. I moved back to my home city of Chicago in 2005. It was in Chicago that I began working with Ken Eschete and Bill Schwarts, the staff piano technicians at Northwestern University. I learned a great deal from these two and enjoyed the opportunity to work with some very fine Steinway, Mason and Hamlin, and Baldwin pianos. Ken and Bill, both wonderful fellows and excellent teachers, also spent about half their days refurbishing and rebuilding some of the older pianos in Northwestern's inventory in a secreted basement workshop beneath Millar Chapel, a magnificent mid-century monolith. It was an exciting and valuable experience to look in on and assist with their rebuilding procedures. Though I would not call myself a piano rebuilder at the moment, I picked up some excellent skills and I hope to continue exploring this facet of piano work in the future. In addition to piano work, I also have a love for composing and performing music, which may not be much of a surprise. Most recently, when in Chicago, I had an excellent experience performing with Head of Femur on a few tours, mainly of the East Coast and Midwest. Over the past few years I've been honored to share the stage with some great artists including Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis, Son Ambulance and many others. Of course, though "many others" translates to bands most have not heard of, I've certainly enjoyed and appreciated those unmentioned. I play music for the love of it and nothing else and I love the people with whom I've had an opportunity to share music both as fellow players and listeners. Though at the moment I am fairly dormant musically, I foresee new projects on the horizon. Having recently moved to New York I'm involved with settling in and other interests tangential to the aforementioned. At present, my other interests center around biology and brain science, which will probably come as a surprise. After taking some classes New York City College in 2009-10 as a non-matriculated masters student, I became a PhD candidate in the field of Neuroscience at CUNY, where I now study. I am fascinated with the intersection of science and art and consequently am thrilled to have found an excellent opportunity to study bird song in the lab of Ofer Tchernichovski. I've been doing data analysis to try to understand the musical features of the Australian butcherbird song and I've also been running experiments with zebra finches to explore the nature of musical qualia, or how music elicits feelings. It's a funny story that I came to this lab through a fellow NYC piano tech, Ben Treuhaft, who's wife Olga has recently received her PhD in Neuroscience from CCNY. Congratulations to her for having recently published and article in Nature on the evolution of bird song culture! I appreciate your interest. I look forward to meeting you, caring for your piano and if you have a second, learning a bit about you as well. |
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