Biography

I’m an ex-pat who grew up in Los Angeles and went to university in New York. I now run a drum kit teaching studio in Belfast and have heaps of experience as a player. I’ve been playing for about 30 years and teaching for 13.  

My dad was a jazz drummer and I grew up learning the kit like a second language, a sort of bilingualism if you like. No formal lessons, but rather through observation and a total immersion in music. Dad passed on his love of big band swing music and took me to see both Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson when I was a little girl. 

My folks split up when I was seven but my dad had a double Ludwig set up and left one whole kit behind. He left me with some grammar and syntax on the kit, but not how to conjugate all the rhythmic verbs.

I remember being nine years old and figuring out how to play Todd Rundgren’s ‘I Saw the Light’ off the radio (with that mambo-like double tom tom hit). Well, that was it for me. I knew right there and then that not only did I know what I was doing, but that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. In a way, I saw the light.

In high school I majored in music and all available electives were filled with music classes. From theory to orchestra, jazz band to choir. I even took marching band instead of PE. Marching band was very 'sociable' -- kids used to smuggle cans of beer in the fuzzy hats to football games. I soon learned that musicians were cool. The Venice High Gondoliers were funky (not as funky as Compton High, hell, nobody was), but we did win some competitions.

I played in lots of bands in and out of school. Not always drums, sometimes keys and occasionally the clarinet. I moved to New York and got a degree in Comparative Literature. I have a love of words and am a bit of a linguaphile.