About Me
I am a multiskilled worker who has spent his life in the arts. My father founded the Riverside Opera Company (ROC) when I was eight years old and the Richmond County Orchestra (RCO) when I was ten years old. To have the unique opportunity to watch two arts non-profits grow by shadowing my father each and every day has given me a wealth of knowledge and experience that makes me unique.
Early childhood memories include visiting Materials for the Arts to acquire costumes for opera productions, helping my father organize various IRS forms, visit prospective venues, proofread grant applications and that was before there was a show to promote. I created the first Riverside Opera Company and Richmond County Orchestra websites when I was only 12 years old!
When the season began and it was time to promote shows, I would run to the local pharmacy to make copies of flyers and ask all the businesses I could if it would be okay to have an ROC or RCO flyer in their business. Back then, we had the policy of “your program is your ticket” because we couldn’t find a cheap or reliable printer for tickets to our shows at the time. I spent many shows folding programs and schmoozing with audience members in my childhood and preteen years.
So, imagine your father going from being a Tuba player to a conductor… you either would fall in love with music or rebel. I chose to rebel against it after a brief stint of piano lessons in the 1st grade. I enjoyed the paperwork because it held so much gravity in the world around me. When I would visit my mother at her job, it was all about paperwork, at school, paperwork, only my father was the person who used his musical skills. Even then, most of his time spent on the phone getting his other musician friends together to perform gigs. My father truly taught me how to create gigs for others as I observed the way he worked in the pre-internet world with phone call after phone call to the internet age with emails being passes back and forth.
Enter my teenage years and after many months of harassment by my peers who wanted to start a band and needed a bassist, I finally relented and said I would join. I was almost 17 years old and looking forward to graduating high school. I worked up the nerve to ask my father if he would get me lessons on the electric bass. He was very happy to se his only son take an interest in music.
I began working with John Blaylock at City Music School in Midtown Manhattan (now known as Joria Productions). He introduced me to a lot of rock and roll music to get me off the ground in music because his background was as a rhythm guitar player, but he’s also an actor.
That summer after high school, I was kicked out of the band that begged me to join because they were all self-taught and between John Blaylock and my father, I was being boot camped on my electric bass. I’d learn a riff with John, come home very excited to show my father and he’d say “very good son, now play it in all twelve keys”.
Many young musicians would probably crack under that pressure, but my genetics were kicking in and I quickly realized that music was my destiny. So, I worked hard to play all the riffs I learned in all twelve keys.
I became a music major at The College of Staten Island (CUNY) where I founded my own band Not From Concentrate in 2008. I also founded The Rock Club which was a performance-based student organization that invited any student that could play or sing to participate in multiple on-campus and off-campus events each semester. I was founder and president for four years and used the budget given to The Rock Club to upgrade a lot of necessary equipment in the music department at my college. Most notably amplifiers for guitars, electric basses and keyboards. While this was all going on, my father purchased my first Double Bass and I appealed to my campus to allow me to join the Hunter College Symphony due to a lack of a symphony on my campus. They obliged and I was able to get credit towards my degree.
During these college years, I was also News Director for WSIA for two years, serving on their board of directors. I briefly had a show where I played classical and opera music, but after the programming director disapproved, I decided to focus on music and left the radio station.
Carnegie Hall
A culmination of my idea “Popera” which blends Opera and Popular music led to Korean Countertenor Sehun Jung working with my band Not From Concentrate and Richmond County Orchestra backing him up at Carnegie Hall in 2019!
My Strengths
· Focused worker that can handle multiple projects at the same time
· Able to delegate effectively to employees
· Able to meet multiple deadlines
· Can run multiple companies simultaneously
· Shares passion for projects with others to keep them engaged
After my formal education, I decided to work with my father to grow his companies, Richmond County Orchestra (RCO) and Riverside Opera Company (ROC). I saw the opportunity to create exponential growth by getting certified by the Mayor’s Office of Contractual Services and creating the Side-By-Side Educational Outreach Program for the Richmond County Orchestra. This program consists of working professional musicians going into NYC public schools and working with students in small group rehearsals.
That same year, RCO received its largest award to date: $20,000 to run our program. This led to me curating the largest production in RCO’s history with Pictures At An Exhibition featuring artwork by recently deceased painter Luzerne Zollars Odell as well as other local artists and photographers. Visual works were projected over the orchestra correlating to each movement of the symphonic work. It was during this time that I came up with the idea of “Popera” (Pop Music/Broadway + Opera) in one concert to garner larger audience numbers for the Riverside Opera Company. The concept worked like a charm and has become a mainstay in the company’s concert season since 2014.
The educational outreach program grew through city funding, expanding to Stuyvesant High School in 2015. Multi-year funding emerged through NYSCA. This growth included increased private funding, and both companies were able to put on more performances than ever. These included special themed pops concerts featuring Not From Concentrate and Richmond County Orchestra performing as one unit for shows with themes such as RCO Celebrates Motown and 50thAnniversary of Summer of Love .We saw our audience expand, and as a result by 2018 the RCO had performed at The St. George Theater working with The Blue Meanies to recreate The Beatles iconic record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety and in 2019, Not From Concentrate and Richmond County Orchestra backed up Korean Countertenor Sehun Jung at Carnegie Hall.
To celebrate these achievements, I worked with RCO and ROC executive staff to host the Noteworthy Awards, which was held at the home of one of the wealthiest people on S.I., Grandmaster Jhong Kim, who’s President of the Board. The fundraiser celebrated the many benefactors and volunteers who helped the organizations grow in the NYC arts community. After the success of this event, the RCO received a standing contract with Gateway Church on S.I. for three performances a year in addition to a partnership which spawned the Gateway Academy Music School, which employed some RCO musicians. The Noteworthy Awards are still held each year in December.
In 2020, RCO and ROC went virtual, producing online events that included a tribute to medical workers, Staten Island Has Talent, &a 90-minute holiday spectacular and pledge drive. I was featured on the front page of the Staten Island Advance in August 2020 for a series called Life Upended, giving my musical angle to the issues arising during the pandemic. During this same time, my spouse came out as a Female-to-Male transgender person. As the main forces of Not From Concentrate, Jaime and I were already working on a follow-up to our 2020 release No Name which was funded through S.I. Arts and is a concept record about a fictionalized school shooting. It was released with a digital comic book. The follow-up became an underground hit single called Clark Kent. Released on Transgender Day of Visibility, the success led to the band performing at Pride Fest 2022 at Snug Harbor and Pride Fest 2023 at the FerryHawks Stadium. Many fans have thanked us for the song for giving them the strength to come out. It also gave the band enough clout to be accepted by the regional ska/punk scene with consistent appearances at NYC’s Subway to Skaville, a monthly event featuring local and touring ska bands. We also began to perform in other states and perform similar events in neighboring states. This same year, NFC networked with the LGBTQ network in Vermont to perform for an LGBTQ youth event in that state and returning the favor by hosting the band Rangus at a pride event on Staten Island. During pride month 2023, I received my second front page feature in the Staten Island Advance about being LGBTQ, and mentioning the creation of my for-profit record label Charging Bull Records that currently publishes sound recordings of Not From Concentrate, Richmond County Orchestra & Riverside Opera Company.
Work Experience
I have worked as a software developer at ABC Company for the past 3 years. During my time there, I have worked on a variety of projects, including web applications, mobile apps, and database management systems. I have experience with front-end and back-end development, as well as cloud computing services such as AWS and Azure.
Skills
My technical skills include proficiency in programming languages such as Java, Python, and C++. I am experienced in web development frameworks such as React and Angular. I am also knowledgeable in database management systems such as MySQL and MongoDB. In addition to my technical skills, I possess strong communication and teamwork skills.