My practice centers on composing music, building instruments, fabricating speakers, recording audio, and spatializing sound

I am a sound artist, composer, and educator whose practice operates across music production, instrument building, and spatial audio. Currently, I am a graduate student in the Arts Technologies / Sound Practices MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside my studio work, I have taught at Illinois State University, Heartland Community College, and Hip Cat Music School, developing and delivering courses in music theory, composition, and audio production, including CTK 204: Music Foundations, a curriculum I designed that approaches theory through the piano roll of a DAW and emphasizes contemporary music practices.

My work centers on composing music, fabricating instruments, building sculptural speaker systems, recording audio, and spatializing sound. I move fluidly between performance, fixed media, and installation, often constructing custom playback environments to control how sound is distributed and perceived. I design and build multi-channel speaker arrays and playback devices, using them as compositional tools to shape movement, phase interaction, and listener experience within a space.

A portion of my practice involves fabricating tuned metal instruments, particularly from brass. I cut and tune each bar by hand, measuring fundamental frequencies and overtone structures, treating these objects as both sound sources and research tools. Through this process, I investigate how material properties of density, elasticity, and surface irregularities affect vibration, sustain, and harmonic behavior. These material decisions extend into the final work: tool marks, tuning inconsistencies, and mechanical noises are often retained as structural elements, foregrounding process and resisting the polished surface of purely digital production.

I treat sound as a physical material. Sustained tones, detuned intervals, atypical rhythmic structures, and gradual phase shifts form the basis of many compositions. My installations in particular emphasize duration and accumulation, requiring physical presence and active listening. By distributing sound across multi-channel systems, no single listening position offers a complete experience; instead, perception shifts as the listener moves through space. This approach challenges fixed authorship, redistributing control across the system, the environment, and the audience.

My background as a performing musician, recording artist, and producer, having written and self-produced multiple albums, EPs, and singles, feeds directly into this expanded practice. My experience in sound design and video production, including work in surround sound environments, informs both my compositional strategies and technical approach.

Teaching remains integral to my work. As an educator, I translate complex acoustic and musical concepts into accessible, hands-on methodologies, often asking students to build resonant objects, analyze frequency relationships, and interrogate the boundaries between music and noise. These pedagogical exchanges function as a form of research, continually shaping my studio practice. Across composition, fabrication, and education, I approach sound as a site of inquiry—one that is material, spatial, and deeply contingent on how it is experienced.