Once upon a time, back in the days when playing on the monkey bars was all I could ever think about, my family owned a jazz club in the small Upstate New York community of Little Falls.  One evening I was allowed to attend a performance (way past my bedtime! Whoohoo!) of the ever talented Jazz flutist Nelson Rangell.  From the moment I heard the tune “Map of the Stars” I thought to myself, “Yes! This is what I want to do. This is what I WILL to do.   I will play like him someday.  I will be a musician.”  I was 10 years old.  Fast forward 15 years, two music performance degrees, travel abroad, musical relationships with amazing people all over the world, marriage to my beautiful husband and here I am. A musician and so much more!

I am eternally grateful for all of the beautiful, and not so beautiful, experiences of my journey so far.  Something that has surprised me in the past three years was my desire for something more. This was not a selfish desire, but a yearning for a professional life that doesn’t seem so “professional” and stuffy, a way to share my music that is more fulfilling and less focused on becoming famous or perceiving monetary gain as a measure of my success. I still hold the question “How can I make my music fit into something like this? Something that, at the end of the day, has me saying…I made a serious difference today!”  

One day in my adventures living in NYC, a flier arrived for my landlord (and dear friend) for LAVA studio in Brooklyn offering classes in trapeze. JACKPOT!  This was it! The change I was looking for. Through this experience I discovered the beautiful and challenging world of the Circus Arts and CircusYoga.   From this point on my perception of music and its potential roll in the artistic world around me was forever changed.  In my lifelong devotion to music, my discovery of circus (especially the trapeze!) and my own practice of yoga I started seeing and feeling the physical and artistic correlations between the three practices.  

Now I seek a way of putting it all together into a practice that not only supports the performer/participator on artistic and physical levels, but is a vehicle through which the community can participate, take risks, create, explore celebrate and grow together.  In a society where music is not a common community practice, I seek to ignite this flame of exploration through my teaching practice in my own community and beyond!