About Me.

Selfie on March 30, 2024 at my Easter Gig in Asheville.

"Sunny Side of the Street" with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra trombone section

Louis James. Instigator of the Wild Rumpus and melodious crafter of mines.

Bonnie Wren. A luminary artist that lives and loves her mission to live and love intensely each and every day.

"To create is to bring something into existence that wasn't there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam."

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

I approach my personal and professional development scientifically and methodically, focusing on building relationships and producing results with a commitment to continuous learning and adaptation.

I have been a professional trombone player and music educator for 25 years, and still play gigs on a regular basis. I specialize in playing jazz and studio music across multiple genres, have been recorded as a sideman on 11 different albums and have thousands of public and private performances under my belt. I consider my life’s work to be dedicated to jazz education and to continue the tremendous work by jazz pioneers Jerry Coker, David Baker, and Jamey Aebersold in furthering the craft of jazz education. My entire life has been soaked with the truth that music perpetually delivers - it is a source which will never deplete and is always in abundance. On this rock I will build my house.

When my youngest child was born in 2016, the late night gigs, unpredictable schedule and low pay as an adjunct had me looking for a greener patch of grass so I took an IT job as a Field Service Technician for a k-12 public school district. Through this work I was plunged head-first into enterprise level software and hardware – from hanging projectors to configuring VPN’s for Powerschool grade reporting, I was expected to do all that was required to keep the teachers working. I didn’t have any answers, but eventually I learned to ask better questions. As I look back and connect the dots, this work was the best possible way to learn the complexities of the learning environment with what would soon become my dream career and job.

When an instructional designer position was posted at my place of work, I hesitantly applied, with the distant thought (and urging from my wife) that this career field would be more satisfying and sustainable than IT in the long run. We were correct.