Musician, composer, freelancer, teacher, and student of music. Trained at the Juilliard School, as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mannes College of Music, Lewis-Clark State University, the Universidad Juan Corpas, and San Francisco State University. He has performed worldwide with ensembles including the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Orquesta Nacional de Colombia, the New Zealand Symphony, and for 20 years with the San Francisco Symphony as well as luminaries like Ritchie Havens, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Zappa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Steve Reich, YoYo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, Joan Jett, Isaac Stern, Aaron Copland, Pierre Boulez, Jeffery Kahane, Moby Grape and Kent Nagano, among others.

As bandleader, he toured Colombia with the A C Lewis Trio, in 2005 created and is still occasionally performing with the polymetric octet Deep Hip Pocket, and is now steering Children of Lucy.