I went to the Guitar Institute of Technology in 1980. I didn't aspire to be a jazz musician, didn't even really know what jazz was. But it fascinated me, and I ended up devoting a serious amount of time to studying it.

This is one of my episodes of Taz-mania, storyboarded by Vicky Jenson and Chris Otsuki. This was one of my favorite periods of my career working with great people and under my boss and good friend, Art Vitello. Art gave me my first opportunity to animate, write, and direct. Thanks Art! That was awfully nice of you :0)

My first TV theme.
Vicky Jenson, co-director of Shrek and Shark Tale had worked with me on several TV series. While she was doing storyboards on Taz-mania, she was taking piano lessons. I had been dying to find a piano teacher to help me with the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata. So I phoned her teacher, Chris Nelson. He said he didn't teach classical, but that he was a composer and asked if he could send me some samples of his work.

We stayed in contact and did some music together. A year later, Vicky was producing the series Beethoven and she had asked me to do character designs.
Chris was trying to break in to writing music for TV. He put together some cues on spec and asked if I would write a theme song with him. So we put the song together, and Universal bought it! That simple!

The Mask

This was one of my first tv themes, with Chris Nelson. We collaborated on numerous things including the theme for the Beethoven cartoon and numerous DreamWorks projects which included writing songs for a series entitled Toonsylvania. That's Rob Paulsen providing the vocals.