Striking a Chord

When did you attend SF State? 

I attended for quite a while, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2008.

So you were a part-time student? 

Yeah. I attempted to be a full-time student. Oftentimes I was forced into part-time student life. My music career really was taking off, to the point where it became too much of an imbalance.

Had you gone for a degree, would it have been in Music? 

Actually, it wasn’t. It was in business marketing. I was falling into the narrative of “Have this backup, because the arts are a bit iffy.” I had no idea what business marketing was. It just sounded cool. I did learn a lot because it absolutely applies to the world of being a musician, especially if you are independent and trying to market yourself. So my time at State was this tug of war of trying to be dedicated to my business studies and me running to the Music department to play the piano whenever I could.

When and how did you get into music? 

My parents recognized that I had this innate ability and attraction to music at a young age. And when we would visit family, friends, they’d have a piano, and I would sit down and instead of just banging on the keys, I would distinctly try to work out melodies. By the age of 5 I started taking music lessons.

Was there any particular instructor at SF State who helped to support your goals?

There were definitely some great professors. But really, my journey in music at SF State started when I heard rumblings about this gospel choir, and I was at the time really getting into playing modern gospel music. It really spoke to me and also played well with my jazz skills. One day I happened to be in the Music department. I heard the choir in this practice room. It was only maybe eight students. And they were playing along with this Kirk Franklin recording called “Don’t Cry.” I knew the song. I kind of peeked in the practice room, and they saw me, and I think maybe some of them knew I played piano and asked if I would join them. I did, and from that point, I became more intrinsically involved in developing the curriculum because the professors didn’t really know how to teach that class. They really rallied behind our student interest to learn and perform this music.

On your website, you mention artists like Lauryn Hill, Sheila E., Michael Franti and Spearhead. What are your connections with them?

During my time at SF State, I was growing a reputation as one of the top jazz and R&B keyboardists in town. I was gigging every weekend. Some of the bigger artists were rooted in the Bay Area. The first opportunity that was like, “Oh, wow. I have to get on a plane to perform a show in London or New York,” was the artist Ledisi, who’s a multi- Grammy-winning artist from the Bay Area. And towards the end of my time at SF State, I played with Lauryn Hill for about a year and a half. And that was the moment where I thought, “You know what? I need to just see where this is going to take me [rather than] trying to register for 15 units and not take a tour to Japan and Brazil and all of Europe.” It’s a hard decision to make. But I’m happy for choosing the art and choosing my passion.

Listening to some of your music, I heard a bit of Quincy Jones, circa “Walking in Space,” and there were sounds that reminded me of Stevie Wonder.

Stevie is probably my No. 1 influence. And Quincy Jones, just as a producer. I owe so much to them. It sounds like it was a fairly smooth transition for you to go from making music to teaching, and then becoming an advocate of music and arts education. You’re the managing director of Yeah, Art!. Yeah. It stemmed from the pandemic. My son was taking drum lessons, and when the pandemic hit, everything was distance learning over Zoom. And it was almost impossible for him to be on a call with an instructor playing the drums, trying to mimic what the instructor’s asking him to do. And a light bulb went off for me that we need to keep arts education alive in this uncharted space [where] we don’t know how long until we’ll be back in person. A group of creatives and I started developing curriculum for music production for different digital art mediums, including animation and augmented reality and virtual reality. We had that packaged and ready to present to schools and then things opened up again. And we realized this would work in the classroom. So, since 2021, we’ve serviced over a thousand students in the middle school and elementary school space, primarily here in Oakland. 

What are the greatest rewards for you from working with students?

I feel like I don’t have much to prove on a stage at this stage of my life. I’ve played in front of hundreds of thousands of people. I played in a club where there’s only 15 people. I don’t really feel like more of that is the key to more success. At this stage of life, [I want to] ensure that the next generation benefits from the path that I’ve taken, and I need to make room for them to have their own experiences. 

Yeah, OK, I’m not getting paid a ton to teach. But I’m getting enrichment in my own life and the opportunities and partnerships that it’s creating and how it infuses my own work. And [being governor of the local chapter of] the Recording Academy, all that is tied to having more purpose than, “Hey, what time do I need to be on the gig and play the piano?”