John began his musical career with an unbelievably progressive central New York elementary music teacher and program that had the students play jazz lab charts. His high school band director emphasized big band music, which was a great education, but painful for a high school kid. When his parents moved, the music became a 175-person marching band with all the accoutrements.

After not playing actively for a decade, John joined a JamBand. A few years later, John began to play with a jazz group called LaMonster that morphed into a large band that did spoken word with jazz and New Orleans funk. The New Orleans connection allowed John to play several gigs with, "...the Satchmo of the Ghetto", James Andrews. The highlight was a gig at the Birchmere with James' amazing 8th grade younger brother, Troy.

John now plays in 4 bands, Moonshine Orchestra, the Moonshine jazz group, Linda Band, and Vital Synz, He retired 3 years ago from Montgomery County Public Schools.