A little more about [ˈkarɪ]

Hello, and welcome to my little corner of the internet! I compose, teach, direct, and sing music — mostly choral music — across collegiate, community, and professional settings. In doing so, I draw on many elements in hopes of finding new resonances between things like audiation, indeterminacy, and ritual-making, to name a few.

I grew up on the backs of horses in the dried riverbeds of the Ojai Valley and came to love the vastness of the Los Padres forest and the untamed interiors of California. I was lucky to be raised in an artistic village surrounded by many mentors, makers, inspiration and, famously, the Ojai Music Festival. Singing renaissance polyphony was an integral part of the (defunct) Ojai Shakespeare Festival that defined my summers. Folks who knew me would probably describe me as someone who was quiet and constantly drawing.

In my undergraduate years I started to focus on vocal arranging and drumming in many forms. I attended the University of California, San Diego and got (heavily) involved in student a cappella groups — The Daughters of Triton and The Tritones — cutting my teeth as an arranger, album producer, music director, and performer. I branched away from campus to sing and beatbox with other groups in Los Angeles and founded the professional sextet Musae in 2010. Threading the needle between singing and drumming, I was also a founding member of Naruwan Taiko, directed (then and now) by the indefatigable Diana Wu. In 2010, I got to beatbox alongside Imogen Heap in an a cappella trio rendition of her song “Earth” at Humphrey’s in San Diego. And if you squint, you can see me in the movie Easy A playing marching snare during the auditorium scenes.

After a convoluted journey through Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts and Japanese Studies, I emerged with a bachelor’s in music theory and composition, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Quite literally on the heels of graduation, I got to arrange and beatbox as part of the group of SoCal singer-songwriters Kinfolk 9 on season 3 of NBC’s The Sing-Off.

This work with contemporary a cappella groups blossomed into teaching workshops and leading clinics with ensembles at festivals (including Boston Sings, Aarhus Vocal Festival, the College Music Society, ACDA, SoJam, N.E. Voices) and adjudicating competitions (Varsity Vocals, ICCA and ICHSA). In 2013, I was a founding faculty member of Camp A Cappella, a weeklong contemporary a cappella summer camp for adults and high school singers, and also taught secondary school students at ReMix Vocal Academy.

Realizing how little I knew of the breadth of ways to know, learn, and do music, I went back to school — this time to the Eastman School of Music. After completing my first masters degree, I moved downstate for a conducting fellowship with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, making my conducting debut at the 92nd Street Y and working on new music projects — including preparing new works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Netsayi, and Paola Prestini for their premieres in a multi-media installation as part of the 2015 BAM Next Wave Festival as well as Michael Gordon’s “Great Trees of New York City” at National Sawdust — and teaching in satellite programs across the boroughs. I also sang with Downtown Voices and Sirens of Gotham, co-directing the latter to a first-place win at the 2018 Sweet Adelines Harmony Classic. I was also a featured beatboxer in DCINY Presents: Total Vocal with Deke Sharon at David Geffen Hall / Lincoln Center and supplied vocal percussion for Cory Smythe’s electric album Accelerate Every Voice.

In 2017, I wrote a chapter introducing vocal percussion to non-beatboxers as part of So You Want to Sing A Cappella: A Guide for Performers. Ever a glutton for punishment, I completed a masters in education from Teachers College Columbia University to explore methods of combining democratic and learner-driven classrooms to augment the audiation-centered aims of Music Learning Theory and to upend conventional ensemble power hierarchies. I did a lot of freelance directing and teaching artist work, adjuncting at Mannes School of Music at The New School and CUNY Hunter College by night while leading curricular choirs by day as part of Midori & Friends and the Center for Arts Education. In 2019 I joined the music faculty at the College of Saint Rose as a Visiting Lecturer in Choral Music, was the first participant from the United States to attend the Jim Hjernøe’s weeklong Vocal Painting bootcamp at the Royal Academy of Music, Denmark—Aalborg, and contributed multiple entries to Teaching Music through Performance in Contemporary A cappella published by GIA Music. In 2020, I joined Choral Chameleon for pandemic-era recording projects as an alto.

After a harrowing year of teaching over Zoom, I moved to South Bend, Indiana to attend the University of Notre Dame as a doctoral student in its Sacred Music Program. I got to work with the GRAMMY-winning Notre Dame Children’s Choir and participated in workshops with with Eugene Thompson, Carolann Buff, Andrew Crow, Alastair Willis, Kimberly Dunn Adams, and David Rayl. While singing with the South Bend Chamber Singers under the direction of Nancy Menk, the choir premiered a new version of Gwyneth Walker’s The Great Lakes cantata for chorus and chamber orchestra. I also sang major liturgies, Vespers, and the occasional mass with the Basilica Schola, a select liturgical choir specializing in unaccompanied sacred choral music under the direction of Campus Ministry Choral Program Director Jonathan Hehn. I also moonlighted with the Collegium Musicum, directed by Dan Stowe. During SMND’s 2024 summer study trip to Rome, I participated in conducting workshops with Walter Marzilli and Franz Prassl at the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music (PIMS), and also had a ball leading performances of Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” in the basilicas of San Clemente in Laterano and San Giovanni in Laterano.

In 2022, I joined the faculty of The Walden School Young Musicians Program as its choir director. I also sit on the advisory board for NE Voices, an annual contemporary a cappella festival for high school singers and music educators. Since the 2025 fall semester, I’ve taught courses in the department of music and direct the Chamber Choir at Bowdoin College as their Director of Choral Activities.