Nearly all my life I have been involved in musical storytelling. I wrote my first full-length musical while still a student, and my first film score followed soon after that. I’ve composed dance scores in collaborations with Twyla Tharp, Mark Dendy and others, and written songs with lyricists Siedah Garrett (“Man in the Mirror”) and Norman Gimbel (“Killing Me Softly”). One of the songs in Snow in August, a musical I’m collaborating on that the Old Globe in San Diego is producing as part of its 2027-2028 season, features a melody I wrote back in first grade. Music has been very good to me. And when I say, “Nearly all my life,” I’m not exaggerating!
All along, I’ve kept up another kind of musical storytelling as well, a more personal kind of songwriting. It’s something I turn to mainly when I’m feeling something too big to be contained, when the pot is boiling over and life gets messy. This type of songwriting isn’t taught in music school. It’s a mysterious process that leads me to places I can’t get to any other way. Songwriting to make sense of the mess. It’s so much better than talk therapy for me…
It took me a very long time to realize these songs aren’t just for me, that they have a powerful effect on other people as well. Songs have always been some of my greatest teachers, songs from artists like John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones, to name a few. Songs stay with me when I recognize some part of my life in them. They show me things I wasn’t quite ready to see for myself. Now I’m finding that my songs do that for other people too, so I love sharing them. Something else I finally figured out…? Playing songs for people, one person and one song at a time, is not the most efficient way of getting your songs out into the world…!
A little over a year ago I got together with my friend Yossi Mizrahi — Joseph E-Shine to you, an extraordinary music producer and world-class guitarist — and began making plans to record an album of my songs. It’s now roughly a year later, and the album has a name, Cave Art for Modern Times. The first single is slated to drop in a couple of weeks.
The making of this album has been unbelievable fun for me. More than that, it’s been one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my life. I’ve been privileged to work with an incredible assemblage of true believers — musicians, singers, engineers, arrangers, graphic artists and filmmakers — every one of them an artist in their own right, putting their hearts and souls into the music. Almost every single one of them has taken me aside at some point to express their gratitude for being able to participate in such a joyous process. It truly doesn’t get better than this. And the end result, the album itself, is so, so good! I can’t wait to share it with you, and with the world at large. Won’t be long now…
In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about Cave Art for Modern Times, and learn about the journey that brought me here, I invite you to click on the Bio link above. And then stand by… Music on the way!
