Retired as an electronics engineering technician and back to what I prefer: music. It's a great hobby. So far Recording Magazine gave one of my pieces a pretty good review. But, it's more of a labor of love than anything else.

 

I worked at a steel mill (1974-84) to put a little studio together and tried to get into commercial music. It didn’t pan out, but I did win a couple of minor awards from the Composer’s Guild and a Keyboard magazine contest during this period. Fresh out of Berklee College of Music (1972-74). It was something else living in Boston in the early 70s. A low-scale studio apartment was $150 per month. It was a block from Symphony Hall and a couple of blocks from Berklee. There was a fire escape at my kitchen window facing the little courtyard. It was like a scene from West Side Story. At Berklee I studied improvisation with John LaPorta and Lenny Johnson (the latter being a Count Basie alumnus) and advanced composition with John Bavicchi. Trumpet section playing with Lou Mucci (a Gil Evans alumnus). I was in the Professional Musician program taking arranging and composition courses. Before Berklee I played in a jazz/rock band called New Horizon (1972). Before that I played in the 282nd Army Band (1969-71) and before that it was a rhythm and blues band, The Reverbs (Ralph Lalama’s first band). Before The Reverbs I started my music studies at the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University (1967).

 

Back even further it was West Aliquippa – the town that Henry Mancini grew up in. It was a town practically inside a steel mill. There was black soot everywhere. It made Ripley’s Believe It or Not! – it’s the only town with just one way in or out. At first it was a tunnel under the railroad tracks, later they closed the tunnel and built a bridge. There was a stairway in the tunnel going up to a train platform where I remember catching a train (with a steam engine) to Pittsburgh. The ethnicity in West Aliquippa at that time was about half Italian and half Slovak. Henry Mancini was a friend of my mother’s brother, and in the 50s he came back for a home coming every summer. He would conduct the Sons of Italy Band. Once he played the piccolo part on a march. Another year I remember they had a piano on the band stand for him. They should have done the extra effort and brought a decent grand for him to play; they just brought a funky old upright. He made a comment and it had a lot of people talking. Life was simple back then. Every Italian holiday the S.O.I. band would march past everyone’s front door. They sounded great! They would put a band stand up on Main Street at the S.O.I. club and play nightly concerts. I still remember all the brass instruments shimmering in the night’s lights. I must have been about eight years old. I was hooked. I had to get a trumpet. It was my first love.