Hello!
I am a musician, writer, scholar, and teacher based out of Oakland, CA. I finished my Ph.D. in Music at the University of California, Berkeley in 2019, and currently teach music history at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I’ve also created editorial content for the Rocksmith+ app for the past three years.
I play and teach a variety of styles. My band M Jones and the Melee performs regularly in the Bay Area. I studied classical guitar at the Dana School of Music before moving to Berkeley to pursue my Ph.D. While there, I performed in master classes for Ana Vidovic, Lorenzo Micheli, Marcin Dylla, Thomas Viloteau, and Gabriel Bianco.
As a scholar my research focuses on amateur music-making in the 17th century. As printed books became more commercially available more and more people gained access to musical skills through printed instruction books. My work traces how these books contributed to the social capital the rising merchant and eventually bourgeois classes tapped into as they sought to climb the social ladder, and how material goods contributed to the establishment of institutions and practices that linger in music education today.
What excites me the most is finding ways to combine my artistic and scholarly interests in a ways that offer something meaningful to people. Come to a concert, check out my forthcoming prose and video essays, or catch me for a lesson sometime.