hi, my name's paul. I work as a jazz guitarist, a composer, and as a programmer. although most of my time is spent working on those three things, I also enjoy reading, playing poker, cooking, and walking around nyc with my lovely wife. we live in brooklyn, ny.
I was born in 1976 and grew up in raleigh, north carolina. after high school I went to ncsu and majored in computer science, the only subject aside from physics I liked in high school. I took some time off of college to tour playing guitar with a ska band but eventually decided to get serious about studying jazz so I quit the band and started playing gigs around raleigh and taking lessons with ed paolantonio, a great local jazz pianist. although I was serious about music I also still liked programming, and so I kept on attending ncsu and working part time as a programmer for glaxo-wellcome and ibm. somehow I graduated, and my then girlfriend (now wife) up and moved to a small studio apartment on 21st street in nyc.
when I got to nyc I worked for a startup, and attended the new school's jazz program for jazz performance. this was a great program and I met a ton of good musicians and improved my playing a lot. A lot of my instructors and peers encouraged me to develop my writing, and I started to take composing more seriously when I was there. I somewhow managed to keep a programming gig throughout the dotcom boom and bust in the digital music industry, and spent a good amount of time working at emusic. I am currently playing a good bit around the city (check my blog for gigs), writing a lot of music and working as a programmer in the financial industry.