I’ve been fascinated and deeply involved with music since I was very young and that interest has not flagged in the time since I retired from my full-time teaching career. I love playing the piano more than ever and I continue to very much enjoy working with my piano and voice students. It is in their lessons that I can share all that I’ve learned about piano playing and singing and challenge myself to continue learning right along with them.
I never had any interest in composing music until 2008 when I decided to try to write a special song for our son’s wedding reception. It was a big surprise to me to find out how much fun I had writing that song, and that led me to write more songs for special family occasions and musical tributes to friends and loved ones. It wasn’t long before I decided to arrange one of my solo songs for choir and was fortunate to have Frank DeMiero and the Sno-King Community Chorale present it on their 2011 Christmas concert. In October, 2012, the superb Choral Arts, a Seattle-based professional level choir, performed my a cappella choir suite “Of Stars and the Heavens.” (You can hear recordings of Choral Arts performing my songs on the Songs for Choirs page.) Those were the starting points for me and there have been many more songs and a good number of performances, too. Hopefully, there are a lot more solo and choral pieces still to come!
You can find a list of everything that I’ve written so far on other pages on my site, and you’ll see that I’ve drawn from a wide range of musical styles from Classical to songs that spring from traditions of the Great American Songbook.
In these very active retirement years I don’t spend much time looking back, but an occasional review of my career helps me reflect on the education and experiences that led me to my current interests. My childhood dream was to be a high school band director, and at Cleveland HS (Seattle) and Mountlake Terrace HS I relished the fulfillment of that dream. Growing up I had also loved singing in and directing choirs and soon after starting to teach at Edmonds Community College I became the director of the Symphonic Choir, a post that I held for over twenty years. I also taught voice, piano, and music survey courses at Edmonds until I became Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences there in 1999. I retired from the college in 2006 and have continued my very satisfying engagement with music. During the time that I was at Edmonds Community College I also held positions as director of the Cascade Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Whatcom Chorale in Bellingham, and the Seattle First Baptist Church Sanctuary Choir.
All of my college education focused on Music Education, with emphases in instrumental and choral conducting and piano performance. I have degrees from Western Washington University and the University of Oregon, as well as 72 graduate credits of doctoral coursework at the University of Washington. In 1997 I began one of the my most significant educational journeys when I began studying the Alexander Technique. It has been a very challenging and rewarding adventure that has helped me move to a much higher level both as a pianist and as a teacher. For more about the Alexander Technique please go to that page on my site.
My wife Jocelyn is a superb visual artist, particularly as a calligrapher and illustrator. Check out her varied artistic activities at www.jocelyncurry.com. We live in Shoreline and remain very close to our adult “children”, Eli and Emily. Our daughter, Emily, is a professional musician in NYC. The joy of our family life increased exponentially last year when our son, Eli, and his wife, Amy, who live in SW Washington, gave us our first grandchild, Ada Mae. (You just have to see her picture!! Go to the Solo Songs page and there she is – on my shoulder!)