As a child, my brother was a heavy metal guitarist and my mother a university piano professor. So each morning and evening, I was serenaded by those two sounds. Grungy, juggernaut riffs from my brother's room, and downstairs, the cascading arcs of Chopin and Beethoven. It all swirled together in my head. For the past 17 years, I've also been an advertising writer and creative director, creating ads for M&M's, AT&T, Jack Link's, Macy's, Popeyes, Jet Blue and countless others. While my job was to write, shoot and edit spots, it was also to find the right score. I quickly became the "music guy," chosen to work with music houses and composers to nail down the job. After awhile, the head of a Music House in NYC heard my music and told me he'd like to master my album (he's done 3 for me at this point). Then while cutting an M&M"s commercial, my editor enlisted me to score the short film he was editing, "Pipe Dreams" (which went one to win at the Soho Film Festival). When I began hiring myself to score work projects, like the MARVEL cybercomic I was helping to write, it all clicked. I had never considered that one could make a living doing this, even though I worked with those who did, daily.So the way I came to composing took a strange, rambling path. And I think this leaves me with quite a varied and unusual skillset. You can expect a texturally rich mix of sounds, often character