Jenifer started playing music at an early age, influenced by her musical mother, she choose the violin at age 5 and experienced her first genre of music the ol’ time fiddle. In 6th grade she was encouraged to pick up the oboe and continued to play in the Youth Symphony of Southern Oregon for 6 years. During these times she also picked up the saxophone and began playing in sax ensembles conducted by her mother. It wasn’t until High School that she became serious about playing and begun to study under the new saxophone professor at the University, Dr. Rhett Bender. Jenifer was involved with Solo and Ensemble Contests, various Honor Bands, and for her senior project, she chose to do a Saxophone Recital.

After graduation, Jenifer left Ashalnd and traveled through Europe and moved to Miami, later settling in New York City where she studied movement at HB Studios, a small acting school in the west village. Later, she decided to move back to Ashland and study Movement at the University.

Music found her again and she joined the Department shortly after arriving back. In 2005, she went to China with the Siskiyou Saxophone Quartet and will be going again this fall with the Siskiyou Saksofone Orkestra to tour Western China. She has also been to Denmark to study perfromance at Clown School and Zimbabwe to study African music.

Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Jinderich Feld, and many other individuals she has experienced along the way have influenced her. As of late Jenifer got interested in digital composition. She has always enjoyed visual collages and she feels that digital composition is like arranging with sound clips, very similar to magazine and postcard clippings.

Jenifer has co-created the music for The Jungle Book done by the SOU Theatre, with Mark Knippel and then the two of them wrote the music for the Rogue Community College’s Good Person of Szechuan. Since then she has done a local independent film From the Ground Up and is currently working again with Mark on another film, The Same Kind of Crazy. This fall she will be working on her capstone, directing project done by her best friend, the play Vinegar Tom. This work will be done through electronic composition and 3 live vocalists.

Jenifer wishes to continue her graduate studies next year at the University of Oregon where she plans to work with the Inter-media Digital Music Program. She will continue to play her saxophone in contemporary chamber ensembles, but for now, her focus will be creating music for the stage.