What experiences in your past, before you started making ocarinas, have prepared you for becoming an ocarina maker?

Oh, it's hard to say. I guess I've never really thought about it before, but I imagine I was influenced as a kid by seeing my dad, a scientist, a plant physiologist, doing experiments. He would test different types of herbicides, for example, and of course there were controls and hypotheses, and he would keep an accurate record of all his results. That was part of growing up.

I also think I learned a lot, believe it or not, from studying a master's in Translation at the University of Puerto Rico. I think I learned a lot about excellence there. I mean, we worked a translation in drafts. A first draft, a second, a third. You didn't just slap something together one time and say "That's good enough." You'd go back later and improve upon it. A good translation was a process, not a one time event. And that, to me, is at the heart of instrument making: the ongoing movement towards excellence.

But I've always had a love of discovery. I'd be happy to spend a good chunk of my workdays prototyping. Unfortunately, now I have to do it in fits and starts, whenever I can grab some time away from running the business and selling ocarinas and things like that.