The Performer
I loved music so much as a kid that they used to call me "Radio." As a young child, every day I’d listen to the radio for hours and learn every song that was a hit. Although I expressed an interest in singing, my parents encouraged me to learn the fundamentals first, so I studied piano for 3 years before switching my focus to the saxophone. I was in the first-ever DoDD elementary school band. My first choice was baritone saxophone, but after I could barely get a saxophone that stood taller than me up the stairs at home, my mother encouraged me to switch to alto saxophone.
I was then accepted into at the Instituto Nacional de Música de Panamá (National Institute of Music of Panama), part of the INAC (National Institute of Arts and Culture). There I studied classical and jazz saxophone for five years. My interest in music extended far beyond jazz. In my teen years, when most of my friends, were playing video games I was dreaming up song lyrics and making beats on computer programs like CakeWalk, FruityLoops (FL Studio), GarageBand and eventually ProTools for pop, rock, and R&B songs I was composing. Eager to learn more about the business, I would read Billboard magazine online every day to watch and try to understand trends on the charts; I was a total music geek.
I have since written songs with and co-produced a jazz album with David Engelhard, a former member of the Zac Brown Band touring band, for Brooklyn-based singer Andrew Kluger, and I collaborated with Berlin-based musicians like LMNZ. I have also collaborated with director-choreographer Raja Feather Kelly on the development of my play STARRY NIGHT, a play with dance, and I have similarly collaborated with director-choreographer Jeffrey Page on the development of my play BAYANO, another play with dance that also includes original music I composed.
As a poet, I have performed my work at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, the Poetry Project, Cave Canem, Brooklyn Poets, Poets House, KGB Bar, Busboys and Poets, and the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, among other venues. I have also performed as a part of the Bespoke Reading Series, Poetry/Cabaret at Green Room 42, Dead Rabbits Reading Series, Pop-Up Poetry at the Brooklyn Museum, Dirty Laundry Lit, and other public programs and event series.