My Story
My first 8 years were spent on a Saskatchewan farm with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Snow was melted in the wintertime for the gas motor May-tag washer and I can still hear my Mother saying “Don’t get any yellow snow where the dog peed!” It was a life of feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, watching the cows being milked and living off the returns of an organic garden when we had never even heard the word “organic”.
I had this infatuation for the keyboard from the first time I saw a piano and how I yearned to have my own. My first piano was a child’s toy baby grand piano from Eaton’s. It was the best Christmas ever which came to an abrupt end when my parents decided to return it and put the $25.00 toward a real piano. I was heartbroken but my dream of having a piano did come true at the age of 8 after we had moved to a small town with a population of 300.
My father was an old time fiddler and he taught me how to chord. Any song I heard on the radio I could easily play and in no time I was performing IN THE MOOD on the ACT radio program. People in the town called me Liberace and I didn’t even know who Liberace was.
Another infatuation, since the age of 3, was New York City. I had cousins who received beautifully wrapped gifts with equally exciting treasures inside from NEW YORK. And my Mother had told me of two of her girlfriends in her highschool who were not allowed to go to the local dances as “My girls are going to dance on the marble floors of New York!” I often wonder if those young ladies ever got out of the province let alone New York. I connect with these memories when my music is played in NYC.
Through my literary agent friend Linda Langton, I met Classical saxophonist Javier Oviedo and Conductor Jean-Pierre Schmitt who politely said “Write something for the saxophone!” And I did which has resulted in 8, so far, of my works performed in New York, two at Carnegie Hall.
It is always a thrill knowing my music is being pefromed whether it is NYC, Wetaskiwin Alberta, Austin Texas or Europe.