bio

Born and raised in San Diego, Nate grew up in a blue collar family where most family members were artists and musicians on the side. Family parties often had a jam session and when he was fourteen he started joining the jam sessions on electric bass after discovering a love for Pink Floyd. He was drawn to the communal experience of performing music and music's magic power to transform a room like invisible set dressing.

He was introduced to jazz through friends and professors in his early years at college. Jazz felt comfortable and familiar to him coming from those loose family jam sessions. The ease of taking a new composition from concept to performance and the opportunity for each musician to act as an improvisatory composer of their part was particularly attractive to him. Writing jazz tunes felt like designing playgrounds for him and his friends to navigate and explore together during gigs. But the most exciting part was getting to color the ambiance of the bars and restaurants where they played.

Nate studied Jazz at Grossmont College and San Diego State University, obtaining a masters degree in Jazz Studies in 2024. That same year his first jazz album “Jazz from the Crypt: Ritual” was nominated for the San Diego Music Awards jazz album of the year. He works as a freelance bassist, composer, and teacher around southern California. Working in the medium of Jazz, Blues, Rock, R&B, and Electronic. He has composed seasonal music for the San Diego Safari Park in collaboration with their on-staff composer Karl Soukup, and continues to compose for Jazz from the Crypt and his more experimental projects like “The Jazgul” and “freaky_logic”.