Early Years
I began music at an early age, inheriting a clarinet from my mother, who enjoys music and singing, and a love of classics from my father. They saw to it that I took naps to music by Schubert and other composers. On my mother's side of the family there are many musicians; my great-grandfather Charles Koontz, a vetrinarian and farmer in rural Bedford, PA, played guitar with his brothers and other musicians a century ago. My grandmother, Olivia Tyler and my uncle, John Tyler, play the piano and organ, and my aunt Nancy Tyler Pieters plays flute. I played clarinet in school, and my band teacher just happened to be Glenn Stuart, who played lead trumpet with Hank Levy and later with Don Ellis. When I was about 18, I became interested in guitar, starting with blues, and then taking my first lessons in classical guitar with Kent Murdick, then at Towson University. I continued studying classical guitar with Claire Ingalls, and jazz composition with Hank Levy. By then, I was gigging and playing concerts in the Baltimore-Washington area. I later earned an M.M. at Howard University in Washington D.C. I began teaching guitar at area colleges, and my fascination with the study of music on a global scale led me to enroll in a new ethnomusicology program at the UMBC (now merged with the program at UMCP), where I earned my Ph.D. It was there that I met Mantle Hood, a world leader in the field.
A Big Change
Although I had already traveled to Asia for research and study, my only permanent re-location, with my wife and two young children, was to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where I had accepted a faculty position at Simon's Rock College of Bard. I was delighed to find myself in an environment which encouraged me to use all of my background; not just bits and pieces. Since then, I have continued to lead and/ or play guitar as a soloist, and as a leader or member of jazz and chamber music groups, including Realtime, which performed for National Public Radio in 1993. My compositions are featured on five CDs, including Look In, Jazz at the Rock, Volumes I- IV, and various multimedia publications. I was Assistant Sound Designer and guitarist for Louis Cat Orze: The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace (an Interactive Adventure in the Court of Versailles); a CD ROM "edutainment" program based on French history and culture in the 16th century, distributed by IVI Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, 1995. By workingon that project, I saw the power of digital media integration, and started a period ofintense study of authoring tools, eventualy leading to my involvement as Lingoprogrammer for Tabla: A Journey into Eastern Percussion, publishedby AIMRecords.
I have also continued to be active as a musicologist. My book, WayofthePipa:Structure and Aesthetics in Chinese Lute Music was published by KentState University Press in 1992. I also published articles in Yinyue Yishu (Journalof the Shanghai Conservatory), Soundboard (Journal of the Guitar Foundationof America), Indian and World Arts and Crafts (New Delhi, India), JazzResearch Papers, 1994 (International Association of Jazz Educators), andother journals, and wroteentriesfor the Asian American Encyclopedia, African American Encyclopedia,the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, and SalemPress.My post-graduate work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Other projects include writing the liner notes for a compact disc of Chinese yangqin music;