TONES
I started playing piano at around age 10 thanks to a generous nudge from my Italian grandma, and it wasn’t too long after that I began sharing the left side of the bench with her playing old standards like “Caravan” and “Up a Lazy River” as she’d shout out the chords to play while she improvised the melody on top. I began writing songs in high school imitating this improvisatory style until arriving at UC Berkeley where I started to hone my craft studying piano with Michael Seth Orland and composition with John Thow. Before finishing at Cal, I went to Bologna, Italy to study music (at the G.B. Martini Conservatory and the University of Bologna), but ended up learning much more about language. There, I experienced first-hand how different patterns of speech and body cues and expressions (of which Italians are, of course, notorious) just simply could not be translated; most of my compositions to this day focus on this concept of meaning being “lost in translation.” I just finished my masters in composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying with Dan Becker. If I’m not in a practice room or my studio, you’ll likely find me wearing my Italian pride on my sleeve, either cooking pasta in the kitchen, playing accordion in the park, or scooting around town on my Vespa.