About Notes between Notes
The great American jazz singer and pianist Sarah Vaughan said, “There are notes between notes, you know.” I believe it is in these creative refugia where the sustaining beauty of words, art, and music can be found. It is also a place where we can seek shelter on healing journeys from loss and trauma.
I hope you will join me in exploring these spaces.
About Me
I am a violinist, conductor, and music educator teaching at a liberal arts university in Northeast Tennessee.
I am an essayist and poet who explores themes of place, material culture, healing journeys, and theopoetics. This work has found a receptive home on Substack in addition to appearing in literary journals in the United States and abroad.
I am an academic researcher focused on a range of topics, including string pedagogy, violin performance practice, Holocaust music, and musical fiction. My research into music during the Holocaust and World War II became my life’s work, culminating in the book The Sound of Hope: Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation during the Holocaust and World War II, was released by McFarland Publishing in 2020. In my efforts to pull back the darkness to see where hope and light can be found, I have also written the chapter “Music as Hope” published by Oxford University Press in The Oxford Compendium of Hope (2025), a cross-disciplinary collection of scholarship that documents the state of research on hope with contributions from over 70 scholars across fourteen disciplines.
I am a certified lay minister in the United Methodist Church and a graduate student at Bethany Theological Seminary pursuing a Master of Arts degree in Theological Writing.
Exploring My Writing
In addition to my Substack posts, my other writing can be accessed on my author’s website.
