My journey into music has been like a spiritual awakening. From my first song Soul-African-Study to the Venice Caprices to the heavenly multicultural experiences documented in my Soulsa and now Classical periods. Like the Royal Conservatory of Music, I simply wish to share music with as many people as I can. Developer of Wellness New Media. Visionary Cultural Presentation Designs. First composition at age 7. Playing piano and keyboards in Soul, Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Salsa, Latin Jazz, Brazilian, Funk, African, Reggae, Calypso, Soca groups and more! By day I was a super-skilled technical writer and stand up trainer for dozens of top Silicon Valley firms, by night playing and composing wild World Music! Now combining technical tools and classical material, rearranging and performing a wide range of styles from Romantic to Modern, Baroque to Futuristic! Amazing new orchestrations, reductions, scores and recordings. From the Afterword of my first book of songs "Honoring Those That Went Before:" My great-grandfather was Teo Vincent the first. His grandfather Joao Antonio Mendonca Vincent published the very first Portuguese language newspaper in the United States, “Journal de Noticias” from 1877 to 1884. No wonder I feel so at home sharing strange but beautiful symbols and articulations. Thank you Joao. I am glad to honor you also. My music is my Musical Cultural Anthropology (or Ethno-Musicology) project. I was born and raised in California, from Los Angeles to the San Francisco bay area. It is a great melting-pot of culture! The music in this book is my way of documenting the culture I am from. The virtuoso and composer Frédéric François Chopin (1810 – 1849) created many songs in the Polonaise form, honoring Poland; my “Soulsa” music perhaps is my Californaise. I’ve been blessed to be inspired by so many lovely sounds: Soul Music, Caribbean, Spanish, African, Classical, Jazz, Fusion, Rhythm & Blues, Flamenco, Disco and many more. I am very glad to share with you some of these artistic styles and influences. May they flow freely to you without me being in the way. Perhaps music is more alive than us. We might just be an organic growth that enjoy it and therefore have it around us, but in fact it might be that the music is intelligent, eternal, and simply allows us to think that we are in charge of things. Ludwig van Beethoven is still alive. A Stradivarius violin today would have lived from the beginning of violin making, through the development of the piano, electronics, recordings and broadcasts and is still revered by many as the finest musical craftsmanship ever created by a human. Since I have found out about my grandmother Claudia Ruddock-Vincent the concert pianist and her great grandfather Theodore Dehon Ruddock the music professor, I realize that I am just a channel, a vehicle. I acknowledge that I am just the current carrier of this tradition. It is an honor, but also very humbling to know I am only a node or network point in the life of the music flowing through. May I not be in the way of my art. May this tribute, my music and culture, be received with the same positive energy that it is sent out with. May I correctly assist fulfilling my ancestors’ dreams and intentions. I believe that this is, appropriately, honoring those that went before.