Oddly, what got me interested in Classical music wasn’t the guitar. As a junior in High School, I took a music theory class and the teacher showed us Soviet composer Shostakovich. I was completely blown away, and remember asking my guitar teacher at the time about classical music. Over the course of the next few years, I slowly added classical guitar to my list of things I played (I was gigging in a blues band for a good part of that), and at some point decided that I wanted to really dive in. This led me to studying with guitar virtuoso Douglas Niedt at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While I pursued my Bachelors of Music degree, I completely immersed myself in classical guitar. I was fortunate enough to perform both the classic work of Isaac Albeniz, Johann Sebastion Bach, and Joaquin Rodrigo, and more contemporary works by George Crumb and Toru Takemitsu. As an alumnus, UMKC invited me to perform a work by Nicholas Omicciolli at their Crossroads concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. At this time I was also discovering my preference for performing chamber music. Ruth Carver and I premiered a work by Scott Blasco in Kansas City and Leah Sproul-Pulatie in Denver. The piece by Leah, Songs of Sensibility, was featured on the “I Care if you Listen” Fall 2014 Mixtape. In 2016 I performed “En Mis Palabras” with the Central City Opera.