Such a joy to have the new principal tuba of the St Louis Symphony playing in my section this week! Thanks for an awesome Rite of Spring, @bridget.conley ! 🥳
A few of the many moments and people that made 2025 so special 🤍
This year was filled with love, laughter, adventures, growth, and incredible opportunities. It was truly a year for the books and I’m so grateful for it all. Cheers to 2026!
First photo PC: Alex Markow
Great to sit in Bridget’s bell 🔔 for Berlioz this week! These new @eastmanwinds EBF861 are working “Fantastically” on this piece! 😆 #iplayeastman #teameastmantubas #iplaylaskey
Wow! What a year! My second season at New World flew by and was filled with so many fun and challenging adventures 🩵💙
1: NWS Gala
2: The Planets at the Arsht Center in October
3: We went on a cruise! 🚢
4: With @noahbtb in Cincinnati
5: With @thefloridaorchestra in St. Pete
6: Alec and I miraculously fit 5 tubas in his car!
7: My family came to Miami to hear me play Pictures in March 🤍
8: With @cleveorch in March
9: With @seraphbrass in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 🎺
10: Celebrating the marriage of Lizbeth and Anthony 🤍
11: I’m a cat person now
12: ☹️😮
An incredible three weeks with @brittfestival is in the books!
Feeling so grateful to have been able to share this experience with so many wonderful people in such a beautiful place 🤍
First season with @nwsymphony ✔️
I’m feeling a whole lot of gratitude for all of the incredible experiences I’ve had these past nine months and for the amazing people I’ve met along the way. I grew so much as a tuba player and a person this year and I can’t wait for all the fun stuff in store for us next season 🫶
Last week I had the honor of speaking and performing at Vanderbilt University’s Dare to Grow campaign event at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami!
It was an honor to share my story with so many incredible people and to have the opportunity to perform with Dean Melissa Rose, one of the people that made my experience at Vanderbilt so special.
💛🖤
Yesterday we had to say goodbye to the sweetest girl.
Belle came into our lives about 12 years ago. Since then she brought nothing but love and joy to our family. She’d been with us through some of our happiest moments and also the most heartbreaking ones. She was so special and we’re going to miss her like crazy.
She loved food almost as much as she loved her humans. She loved food so much so that one time after dinner she was desperately trying to lick snackies off our dirty plates as we were loading the dishwasher, then got her collar stuck to the dishwasher rack, then panicked and sprinted down the hallway with the dish rack attached, leaving a trail of broken dishes behind her… and then she did it again a few weeks later. Another time she snuck into the pantry and ate an entire bag of dog food in one sitting. Her favorite trick she learned over the years wasn’t sit or stay, it was the Jedi Mind Trick: she’d go up to a family member that hadn’t fed her dinner and pretend like she was starving. I’m not ashamed to say I fell for it at least a few times.
She had lots of nicknames over the years. We sometimes affectionately called her Diva Bitch, on account of the fact that she refused to go outside if it had just rained because she didn’t want to get her paws wet. But even though she may have hated wet sidewalks, she loved the ocean. She also loved sleeping on the side of the couch she wasn’t supposed to, giving “hugs” when we came home, bully sticks (her “cigars”), towels, sporting her “flying nun ears” whenever she was especially happy, and her favorite spot - a small, sunny patch of grass in front of the house.
If you knew Belle, you loved her - even if she barked at you incessantly the first time you met her.
Rest in peace, Belle Belle ❤️
