From Folk to Forests:
An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
Noah Breneman
Los Angeles, California
Interview held in October 2021
Jill at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.
Noah Breneman (NB): First, thank you for agreeing to do this. I’m very excited for the double reed community to learn more about you and your music. To start off, could you take us through your early music education up through college?
Jill Haley (JH): Sure, and thank you for the opportunity. It’s very cool to do this with one of my favorite former students! I started piano lessons when I was around six or seven. In 5th grade I started playing the flute but my best friend was a flute player too (and she was better than me), so I switched to oboe. I was in the Buffalo Youth Orchestra and all-state festivals. I came from an extraordinarily great music program in Clarence, New York which really encouraged students to take private lessons. When I was 16 I played the cor anglais solo in Symphonie
Fantastique as part of the International Youth Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was so nervous because I was so young and it was my first time playing that piece, but the whole experience was definitely a highlight! I completed two years at SUNY Fredonia as a music therapy major. It’s a great school, however, I wanted to be in a bigger city where I could study with someone in a big orchestra. I settled on Temple University because I really liked Philadelphia and loved Dick Woodhams’ playing.
NB: And the Philadelphia Orchestra’s a pretty big orchestra!
JH: Yes! I was accepted to Temple so I completed two years at Fredonia and then finished the rest at Temple. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music with a concentration in music therapy. And that takes us through college!
NB: And while at Temple you studied with Stevens Hewitt who was the associate principal in Philadelphia at the time, right? After Temple, what were your career goals and aspirations? JH: First of all, I had to figure out how to support myself if I was going to stay in Philadelphia. I was really grateful that I had a job working as a music therapist case worker in what’s called a partial hospital program. That’s where people go when they get out of mental
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From Folk to Forests: An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
health facilities and still aren’t ready to get a job. I was doing a lot of music therapy, some group therapy, and handling paperwork, that sort of stuff. I also started teaching private lessons two nights a week at a music store for piano, oboe, flute, and saxophone. As I finished up at Temple I met Mark Oppenlander, a guitarist, and we started playing together. We formed a trio with another guitarist, Frank McDermott, called One Alternative and started playing at coffee houses. We’d get paid like 50 bucks but it was fun and something to do on weekends. Those are appreciative audiences: they’d never heard an oboe before and didn’t know what the heck it was! Around the same time I also started working with Kevin Roth.
NB: For those who aren’t familiar, could you explain who Kevin Roth is and how you became involved in his albums?
JH: I worked with Kevin for a long time, 20 plus years probably. Kevin is a dulcimer player and a folk singer. There was a record label called Folkways that recorded international music, very folk oriented music, and the guy who ran that label really liked Kevin’s simple instrumental playing on the dulcimer and his singing. We always laughed at the title of his first album: Kevin Roth Sings and Plays the Dulcimer. He would say, “the title is telling you exactly what you’re getting!” That was before I met him. Then he decided he wanted to start working with other artists and Mark, my guitarist friend from One Alternative, suggested that I play oboe for him.
NB: The first album you ever recorded on was one of Kevin’s, Dulcimer Man, from 1982. You were featured on just one song, “Free Your Love.” Did he have that solo written out for you or did you improvise that melody?
JH: No, he did not write anything out. It’s very much intuitive with him so I would just listen and chart it out. Not to go off on a tangent, but if you want to improvise, start playing over really simple folk songs. This is where a basic music degree helps: you can hear a I-IV-V or a I-6/4-II-V-I progression.
NB: Basic theory!
JH: Yes, you can hear the chords, sit down at the piano, and figure them out. At first I actually wrote out the solos. I remember there was a song called “Marvelous Toy.” I wrote that out because I was so nervous about improvising in concert. So, I started off with a mixture of written-out and improvised solos and I continue to do that today.
NB: I was looking you up on discdogs.com and saw a lot of albums I didn’t know about. I always thought that Greenlawn, which I’ll get to in a moment, was your first recording, but I noticed that Dulcimer Man preceded it by a few years.
JH: Yeah, I played on lots of Kevin’s albums. Again, something I have to do someday is actually sit down and come up with a real discography. I’ve started a list and it gets a little overwhelming because I’ve played on well over 100 albums. Anyway, I was playing with Kevin and his career was starting to take off. We were doing a tour of all the Penn State campuses and we played in New York City. At the same time I was performing with my trio, One Alternative.
NB: You mentioned briefly when you met Mark and Frank and formed One Alternative together. How did you all start doing concerts and recordings?
JH: I met Mark when I was still at Temple and he had started doing some duet work with Frank. The way so much of this happened is I’d listen to music while making reeds and improvise as I was testing the reeds. I’d be scraping away at home on weeknights and
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weekends listening to recordings. A tremendous influence of mine was Paul McCandless. I’d listen and improvise along with his Oregon albums. So, anyway, Mark and Frank had one piece and I asked if I could make up a part for it. They agreed and they liked what I did, so we started doing the same thing I was doing with Kevin: performing at folk clubs. We even played at the Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society because they’re both classical players as well—that’s where the name One Alternative came from.
NB: Totally, you were straddling two genres!
JH: We were. It was back in the ‘80s and before “alternative” was such a trendy thing. NB: You’ve also recorded a lot on the Windham Hill label. Give us an introduction to
this because it’s something not many people my age know about. Could describe the record label and also the genre of music it promoted?
JH: I wasn’t aware of Windham Hill until the ‘80s as I got through college. I started hearing the pianist George Winston. His albums were just beautiful instrumental piano music. I’m not sure if the term “New Age” had really been coined yet. Windham Hill was started by a guy named Will Ackerman back in the ‘70s in California and it had that super relaxed California vibe. Will is a guitarist and he’s a very intuitive player. In the music business there is talent and there is luck, and he had both. He recorded an album of guitar music and it just took off. I don’t know the specific details, but Windham Hill became a whole genre of music that was very popular in the ‘80s and ‘90s into the early 2000s of instrumental music of a wide variety. They had albums called “samplers” and my husband, David Cullen, played on the guitar sampler. What ended up happening was that David was
Jill & David Cullen performing at Zone Music Reporter Conference, New Orleans
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From Folk to Forests: An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
touring with the Windham Hill folks all over the country as a guitar player/guitar tech. There came a point where Will needed to find a wind player. I’m not sure what he asked for—it probably wasn’t oboe—but David mentioned that I played oboe so I took one of the famous Windham Hill pieces that had a wind synthesizer…
NB: Okay this sounds very ‘80s!
JH: I wasn’t interested in playing one, but it had a sweet sound. Chuck Greenberg had a band called Shadowfax, and he played solo wind lines on this synthesizer. I basically copied him, but played it on oboe. Will told me this story, and he sometimes exaggerates, but he said that when he heard the track he was in the car and had to pull over because it was so beautiful. So, he liked oboe, and that was great! And, by the way everyone, the song was in seven flats, so I don’t want to hear any nonsense that you don’t need to know that key. It was in C-flat and went to A-flat minor so just hang in there with those scales!
NB: I’ve listened to some Windham Hill stuff, and I think it’s what people would call very “chill vibes” type of music. There is a definite sound that you hear across the different artists. As for the other oboists who recorded on this label—Paul McCandless and Russel Walder—did
you know them or were you all in different circles?
JH: I never met Russel but we know of each other. He lives in New Zealand now and we’ve emailed a few times. He’s a very chill, free spirit kind of guy. Of course I knew Paul McCandless’s playing. Mark was very good at getting gigs for One Alternative. We would open for a lot of pretty famous artists like Oregon. That was a real highlight for me. I got to hang with Paul and Ralph Towner, their guitar player.
NB: For people looking to delve more into this genre, Oregon is the group Paul McCandless started back in the ‘70s. But even before that, he played in The Winter Consort, started by Paul Winter. You talked about One Alternative straddling two genres and the same is true for all Paul Winter’s stuff. It’s sort of easy listening but then there’s Paul McCandless playing Le Tombeau de Couperin on English horn. It’s very much based in the classical world, too.
JH: I actually met Paul Winter. He needed an oboe player because Paul McCandless wasn’t playing with him anymore, but I was so nervous when I met him. I was shaking and I think I made a bad impression because I didn’t hear anything back…but that’s okay!
NB: Were there any other women in these circles with you? I see pictures from back then and it’s always you with all these guys. Where were the women in this scene or were you sort of flying solo?
JH: There was a woman, Nancy Rumbel, who was doing something very similar to the whole Windham Hill thing. She recorded on the other big record label that was putting out this kind of instrumental music back in the ‘80s and ‘90s called Narada. I actually just heard some of Nancy’s music on the radio the other day.
NB: I’ll have to look her up! Now I’d like to fast forward a bit to your solo career. This was around the time I started studying with you in 2010. How did this all start?
JH: I toured with Will Ackerman for many years and got to visit some gorgeous places, my favorite being Boulder, Colorado. Then he decided to sell Windham Hill and move to Vermont to start his own studio. He sold the label, moved, and built this gorgeous studio with Corin Nelsen, who is now my co-producer and an integral part of my sound. Will started getting clients who wanted to record in his studio and have him act as producer because they wanted to sound like Windham Hill. You have to understand that this was
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really the gold standard in the ‘90s and early 2000s. So, he needed what they call a “stable of regulars.” I started playing on a lot on these albums and hearing a lot of this kind of stuff. [Walks over to the piano and plays simple arpeggiated chord progression.] One of the albums I played for, Love’s River by Laura Sullivan, won a Grammy. I was improvising over this kind of music in the studio thinking that I could do this too, but make my own sort of statement and expand the harmonic language a little bit. Around the same time, I had been co-writing a lot with One Alternative.
NB: And I just want to add for our readers that One Alternative is still actively recording and performing as a group to this day!
JH: Yes we are! Back in 2010, David and I visited Glacier National Park for a vacation and it all sort of sparked. I decided to write music about the place because it was so beautiful. I sat down at the piano and wrote a whole album and then recorded it. I played the piano and double-reed parts and David played some guitar. We went up to Will’s studio, Corin was the main engineer, and we worked together to produce Glacier Soundscapes.
NB: I remember coming for one of my very first lessons and you gave me a copy of that CD. I thought it was so cool that my teacher had made an album! Did you always have a love for nature? Were you always going for hikes and visiting parks?
JH: No, back when I was a kid we played outside a lot, but my parents never took me to a National Park. As I got older I found that it was so astoundingly beautiful and I really loved hiking. I didn’t really start doing a significant amount until maybe twenty years ago. I had three kids and I was working a lot of different jobs—as I still do.
NB: Since Glacier Soundscapes, you’ve released a solo album based on national parks about every two years or so, right?
JH: Yes, I’ve released eight albums of my own. Glacier Soundscapes was the first from Glacier National Park in Montana. After that recording I started doing concerts where I put together a simple video of images from the internet that matched the titles of my pieces. As that started taking off, people wanted to see pictures of the actual places that inspired the music. Starting with Zion and Bryce Canyon Soundscapes, my second album, I included a photo booklet. That was considerably more expensive to make, but at the time, people were really buying CDs. After that album my recording engineer/producer, Corin, told me about the National Park’s artist-in-residency program. I started applying and a lot of them were just into visuals like photography, painting, and some writing, not so much performing arts. I did find some that accepted music applicants and Mesa Verde was the first park that invited me to come. I was really excited! The picture on the cover of that album, Mesa Verde Soundscapes, is of a Kiva, which is a sacred area of these dwellings in the park, with my English horn sitting on the ledge.
NB: I distinctly remember you giving me that CD, because Mesa Verde Soundscapes was released in 2014 when I was a senior in high school. I put it in my car on the way home and to this day that is still my favorite album of yours. I’ve performed the opening track “Chapin Daybreak” many times in recital.
JH: Yes! I knew that 2016 was the centennial of the National Park Service so I was deter- mined to put out a compilation album of twelve pieces about twelve different national parks. That was my third album, National Park Soundscapes. Next I was invited to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, back to Glacier, this time on an actual residency, and then to
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From Folk to Forests: An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
Album Cover, Mesa Verde Soundscapes.
Badlands National Park in South Dakota. By this point I had a groove; I’d spend a few weeks developing ideas on the keyboard, making reeds every day, taking video footage, and going on lots of walks. Usually at the end of the residency I would do a concert in the park.
NB: And they would sell your albums in the gift shop!
JH: Yes, between 2010 and 2020 Mesa Verde, Badlands, and Glacier all stocked my CDs and I sold hundreds and hundreds of copies. Obviously, that’s slowing down now. I would apply to all these parks and get rejected. (Hint, hint to all of you out there taking auditions!) I decided to keep applying to Glacier because that was my favorite. I applied maybe three or four
times and I was finally offered an invitation.
NB: Right, because there’s two albums: Glacier Soundscapes and The Waters of Glacier.
JH: Yes, The Waters of Glacier is twelve pieces I wrote in 2018. I was there in late 2016 but it takes about a year or so to release all this. Then I went to Wrangell–St. Elias in Alaska which was incredibly rugged and I lived a very primitive life but it was absolutely amazing.
The music from that trip I’m hoping to put on an album called Ice and Sun which will be a compilation of pieces from Alaska and Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. I thought Florida and Alaska would be a nice juxtaposition. My next planned release is The Forests and Shores of Arcadia about Arcadia National Park in Maine.
NB: What’s a typical day like for you in a park?
JH: First of all, I’m pretty much in total bliss. I love my family but I also love my alone time! What happens when you are offered a residency is that the park does not pay you. I get asked this a lot at concerts. However, they do give you a place to live for two to four weeks. The first week I spend hiking a lot and creating music. I usually bring or rent a keyboard.
A typical day is partly outside and partly inside writing music. The last few years it’s really all about getting the music ready for my pianist to come out and do a concert at the end. The last week I have lots of scribbles and I’m just trying to make it readable for her.
NB: You mentioned how you include your photography both in the CD albums and in your live performances. These recitals are both a musical and visual experience because people are seeing these places exactly as you saw them in the park.
JH: Yes, I initially started that because people were requesting photos and then I found that people really enjoy seeing videos as well. I cannot tell you how many people raise their hands at a recital because they’ve been to these places and are reliving those fond times in
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their life. The music is very much central though and I don’t consider myself a professional photographer, it’s more so a fun hobby for me.
NB: Back when you started this project, you could go to Barnes and Noble and browse their huge CD section but sales are steadily declining. In 2020 vinyl actually surpassed CD sales for the first time since the ‘80s! In this age where people are mostly streaming music but the parks want something physical to sell, how do you see your projects evolving in this transitional age?
JH: At times it is very discouraging because I used to get purchase orders for a hundred CDs and they’d sell in one season at the park. Selling the actual product was a nice way to fund these projects. All of my music is available on streaming platforms like iTunes, Apple Music, and Spotify. Sirius XM radio also features five of my pieces on the Spa channel. Glacier National Park just ordered a hundred CDs this week, so there is still some market for them.
NB: We all know that artists don’t make a lot of money from streaming services so how do you get in touch with radio stations to promote your music?
JH: I hire a company that does radio promotions. They do a fourteen- to sixteen-week promotion and give me a list of different stations and music services like Pandora, and all sorts of ways people access music. Between them and myself we get my music to these places digitally all over the world. Some of the radio stations actually want physical CDs for the programmers. I have a distributor who gets the music up digitally and also sends physical CDs to Amazon. So there is still a market for CDs, which is fantastic.
NB: Exactly, we talk about a digital age but yet there’s still a desire to own physical albums from the artists you really like. Now switching over to composing, I feel like there’s such a stigma that if you want to be a composer you have to go to school, study composition, and get commissions from different groups. But, over the course of these albums, you’ve written over a hundred pieces for oboe and English horn with guitar and/or piano. What would you say to people who think to be a “composer” they have to go through all these academic steps?
Jill at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
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From Folk to Forests: An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
JH: Well, there are different roads and different goals. I know many people that have gone to school for degrees in composition, but it depends on what your goals are. Mine was very intuitive. I wasn’t saying “I want to be a composer,” I was just thinking, “I hear this beautiful music and I want to get it out.” I also have a real commitment to making the experience enjoyable to an audience. Over the years I’ve seen people who do everything by ear, however, it’s really great to have basic theory skills. It’s good to know what a 9th chord is, an 11th chord, suspensions, and how to modulate to different keys.
NB: And how to apply all of that!
JH: Yes, in a very simple, almost folk-like sense. I’m a melodic person because of being an oboist and I’ve had to make up so many melodies over the last thirty of forty years for other people’s music. So, melodies are very easy for me.
NB: We mentioned earlier that since 2010 you’ve released an album every two years or so, but now this year, during a pandemic, you’ve released three albums! Could you describe each of these for us?
JH: Sure. At the height of the pandemic when we were all house bound and nobody knew what was going on, I got really discouraged. We weren’t able to play live and everything was on zoom so I decided as soon as things started opening up I would try to find a studio to record some music. I found one nearby that let me come in and record some piano parts for music I wrote in 2019 at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, which at that point had been my most recent residency. My producer, Corin, had moved to Michigan so I recorded the oboe and English horn there in the summer of 2020. Unfortunately, in January 2021, things were really bad again so we had to mix online. He would mix stuff and send it to me which was really tedious. That album, The Canyons and Mesas of Bandelier, came out in March 2021. Then in April came a release called The Silence of Grace.
There’s a label that started in 1986 in California called Spotted Peccary. They started doing very ambient music, a lot of synth sounds, and very long pieces that were more drone-like and meditative. In 2016 I played at the annual Zone Music Reporter conference in New Orleans. Zone Music Reporter is an organization that tracks air-play of contemporary instrumental music all over the world. David and I were invited to do a set there and Deborah Martin, the owner of Spotted Peccary, heard us play and really liked my sound. She approached me about doing a project. In June 2019 I went out there and spent time exploring the Pacific Northwest and creating music with her. I pretty much wrote stuff like I always do at the keyboard, but the difference with this album is that it’s much more ambient. She took my keyboard parts and put them through all sorts of electronic synthesis stuff. The one thing I did request was for her not to touch my sound because what makes this a collaboration is my oboe and English horn playing. That record label has a two-year layout. In other words, it takes them one and a half to two years to complete the finished product. They release one album a month and have a whole team of people so I had to let go of the reigns on a lot of things. But I was happy to climb over into that genre just for the experience!
NB: Sounds like a fun collaboration!
JH: Yeah it was fun! We released that in April 2021 and it’s done very well. Deborah and I recorded our second collaboration this past summer, and that will be released hope- fully at the end of 2022. She’s envisioned three recordings of our music so she’s seeing this as a trilogy. My third release this year is called Wrapped in Light. During the height
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Album Cover, Wrapped in Light
of the pandemic I was so depressed and decided to read something to try and get uplifted. I started reading the Psalms, and while that stuff can be terribly depressing and horrible, there is a lot of beautiful natural imagery. I decided to focus on that.
“Wrapped in light”: it’s such a beautiful image. I just improvised on the piano and decided this would be a solo recording of piano, double reeds, and simple synth string sounds. The whole point was that we were alone during the pandemic and it was supposed to be more meditative, just like a wash of sound. But, in the end I couldn’t help myself so my husband David recorded some guitar and then
our son, Graham, recorded some cello as well. Wrapped in Light just came out last week on November 5th. And, by the way, my publishing company is called Cor Anglais Records and I know you’ll all get that!
NB: This is the audience that knows exactly what that means! Writing an album based on the Psalms also relates to your career as a church music director here in Berks County. Could you describe for us the different aspects of your freelance career?
JH: I’ve always had to do six or seven jobs at the same time. As I said in the beginning, I was a music therapist and then decided to do more music teaching privately. I have 25-30 students currently, mostly piano, but a few woodwinds as well. Like you said, I work as a church musician directing the choirs. In the last ten years, once my kids graduated from high school, I started subbing at our local school district just for the music teachers because I like them and I enjoy subbing for the music classes.
NB: And it was great when you would come in because we could still rehearse!
JH: Yeah, I always have to straighten out the new 7th graders when they see me for the first time. They all think it’s going to be another study hall! I also love playing for the high school musicals, I’m the rehearsal accompanist for that. I work at Muhlenberg College teaching private oboe lessons. I record a lot at Will Ackerman’s studio, I was just up there twice in the past few months working on other people’s projects as a recording artist.
NB: And you play in the York Symphony!
JH: I’m forgetting my orchestral stuff! Just as I’m getting ready to play Mahler 1 tonight on English horn. I was just practicing looking for that beautiful low E. Yes, I’m the English horn player with the York Symphony in York, Pennsylvania. I also sub a lot in local groups like the Reading Symphony and play for fun with a local community band. I’m in a woodwind quintet as well and we just started doing concerts again.
NB: Recently there have been projects where your music has been orchestrated for different ensembles. Tell us more about that.
JH: Back in 2016 The Ringgold Band, a community band here in Reading, agreed to do four of my pieces so I created a National Park Suite for solo oboe/English horn and
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From Folk to Forests: An Interview with Oboist and Composer Jill Haley
band accompaniment. However, I was always hoping to have an orchestral version so Tom Shade, who did the band arrangement, made another arrangement for orchestra. The Berks Sinfonietta premiered that at a beautiful nature setting called Hawk Mountain in June 2021. At that time, I asked the director if I could have another suite of four pieces done in the future and he suggested I use another local arranger, David Hiems. Through the gen- erosity of the Reading Musical Foundation, I was able to get a grant for David to arrange four new pieces for orchestra and solo oboe/English horn which is going to premiere June 11, 2022 again at Hawk Mountain. I also pitched the concept of doing one of these suites with some video footage to the York Symphony and it has been scheduled for their concert series in November 2022.
NB: Lots to look forward to! Where can people find out more about you and hear some of your music?
JH: Go to jillhaley.com and you can hear music, watch videos, read about the residencies, and there are links to buy anything in any format, digital or physical. If you’re interested in performing my music, I just started a catalog page on J.W. Pepper. You’ll be able to buy PDFs online, but they will also print and send it as sheet music. This is something people can access worldwide and hopefully oboe players who might not come across my music otherwise will find it there! The address is jwpepper.com/myscore.
NB: That’s great, I’m so glad you looked into that! Your music is accessible and versatile so it’s perfect for both young students and mature professionals. I love adding your pieces to my recital programs and it’s especially great for musicians looking to play something new at church that’s not the Marcello concerto.
JH: Or how about that Handel in 6/8!
NB: Exactly, let’s do something new! In closing, I think a lot of people, especially my age, think that we have to nail down our careers very early. I’m 25 going on 26 and I think for some, the mindset is that they have to be principal oboe of some orchestra by that age, or they’re nothing. What’s your advice for people to get a perspective of what you can do with a lifelong career in music?
JH: That’s a really heavy question and it’s a very emotional one for me because I have three adult children that have pursued careers in this and I know what it takes. I told them what it takes and you all out there reading this know what it takes. It’s hard, hard, hard. So much of it is talent, hard work, and luck. My son just auditioned last week in Atlanta and there were 99 players there. You know the odds! For me, it actually happened at a much later age. I was always working by playing in orchestras, teaching, and performing with my folk groups, which was fun and self-fulfilling. But, when I got older, I was just trying to make money creating my own music. My suggestion is that when you’re young, go for that best school, best teacher, a super great practice routine, and take auditions. Take a lot of auditions. Take them as much as you want and can afford to, but be realistic and realize that there are other options out there.
NB: There’s a lot out there to explore. We look at these orchestral jobs as artistically fulfilling and a stable income but at the same time that’s not what everyone wants nor is it everyone’s path. There are so many different avenues one can take and I think we should discuss that more openly. It’s a bit of a waiting game, though, to discover where you’re supposed to be. It might not come right away.
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JH: Right, but I find if you can just enjoy every musical experience you have – at this point in my life as an older oboist each time I get asked to play a piece I think that it might be the last time I get to play Mahler 1 or New World Symphony. How many more times am I going to get to play that famous solo which I love? Or Ravel’s Piano Concerto or “Clouds” by Debussy. I’ve so enjoyed getting ready for these pieces just because I want to do the best I can, and that’s a cool place to be, but that does come with maturity.
NB: That’s great advice, to be grateful for our experiences and always strive to do our best. That’s also a great high point to end on. Jill, thank you so much for agreeing to do this, I’m really excited for the community to learn all about you!
JH: Thanks so much, Noah, this was a lot of fun!
Noah Breneman is a freelance musician located in Los Angeles. He is principal oboe of the American Youth Symphony and performs regularly with the Downey Symphony, California Young Artist Symphony, and the Vincente Chamber Orchestra. Noah holds a Masters degree in Oboe Performance from the University of Southern California and completed his undergraduate studies at The Pennsylvania State University. His teachers include Joel Timm, Marion Kuszyk, Tim Hurtz, and Jill Haley.
