About me: I made my TV debut as the baby in a Carnation milk commercial, and my stage debut a few years later as one of the shipboard kids in the musical Sail Away. I started writing show tunes when I was ten, and my music camp tuner of Harvey inspired the local papers to spotlight a new “mini-producer,” and its playwright Mary Chase to proclaim me “the Noel Coward of your generation.” At 12 I won the lead role in Mountain Born, a World of Disney episode for which I also wrote the theme song, and that same year I formed a “Carpenters-plus-two” vocal band with my three sisters. When my two older brothers joined the group on drums and guitar we became The Family Tree, and won a coveted spot in the New Year’s Eve line-up at West Hollywood’s famed Troubadour club.

As a Yale freshman I was tapped for all the a cappella singing groups, and went on to pitch the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus the same year my barbershop quartet The Varsity’s Quad placed 3rd in SPEBSQSA Northeastern Regionals. My commencement musical Makin’ Light enjoyed two subsequent productions, and my Monday night talent show at The New Haven Restaurant was the hottest show in town my post-grad year.

My third week in Manhattan I played the New York opening of the movie Endless Love, “the celebrity event of the season” according to the People photographer covering it. Those years I played cocktail piano at uptown venues like the Essex House, and Broadway singalongs into the wee hours at downtown venues like the Duplex and Marie’s Crisis, where I was a post-show favorite with the cast of Saturday Night Live. I also conceived and authored the “Cats meets Jurassic Park” children’s musical Rock and Roar, Dinosaur, later reissued with Fresh Prince star Janet Hubert playing paleontologist Janet Granite. Other credits include lyrics for the Bistro award winner Moments in the Air and the MAC-nominated Push My Buttons, as well as Oscar of the Waldorf, an original musical presented for the grand reopening of Oscar's Restaurant at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and numerous specialty lyrics including The Jacket, winner of Equity's 1992 Golden Slipper Award.

I then shifted my performing focus to events, providing parody revues and onsite piano entertainment for private and corporate parties at venues like Maxim's, the Plaza Hotel, Windows on the World, The Four Seasons, Regine’s, the Water Club, Tavern on the Green and the Hammerstein Ballroom, where I opened for Hootie and the Blowfish at a benefit for Boomer Esiason’s Heroes Foundation. That year Boomer referred me to Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas, who hired me to play their Christmas party (I performed a request for Walter Cronkite!). I also relocated to the Princeton area, the better to serve a client base that now ranged from Philadelphia to Kent, Connecticut, where my client of longest standing (and subject of Now It’s Christmas) has a country house.

It was that client who encouraged me to do something with Now It’s Christmas, and exploring that prospect led to the discovery that what I used to pay just for studio demos could now finance a fully produced song. My Now It’s Christmas producer Paul Baggott so knocked me out with his work that I’ve been keeping him busy ever since, and one of those efforts, Break My Heart, won Special Mention at the SanremoSenior 2022 competition. I returned to San Remo this year as a Semifinalist, singing my song Bigger Than Both of Us in English and Italian, and have now launched a sideline translating Italian pop songs into English while I complete the tracks for my first non-seasonal release. The Now It’s Christmas EP features two versions of the title cut, the second Paul’s reference vocal on the “full” production, which I loved so much I consider it “the UK version.”