Biography

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Meg was born in Bradenton, Florida in 1979. She began playing the piano around the age of ten, when her grandmother gave her an old upright piano. It was also at this time that Meg joined her elementary school choir; she continued to sing in various choirs into her early 20s. In addition to singing, she began accompanying choirs at the age of fifteen. At age twelve Meg’s mother taught her how to play acoustic folk guitar. With the exception of a few early piano lessons Meg was largely self taught until she reached college.

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In college Meg studied piano and voice, and, later, pipe organ and music theory. At Manatee Community College (now State College of Florida) she participated in two years of opera workshops, singing arias and duets from the opera repertoire. After transferring to the University of Florida, she graduated with a BA in music theory in 2001 and performed a senior recital on the pipe organ. She began her first church job as accompanist (she had worked earlier as an alto section leader) at age eighteen in a small church in Palmetto, Florida, and continued to work in churches as organist and pianist until age 35.

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In 2002 Meg began studying for her Master’s degree in music theory at the Florida State University, focusing on analytical methods for music written in the latter half of the twentieth century. She continued to study and perform on the organ, participating in masterclasses and giving a lecture recital. After graduating with an MM in music theory, she moved to New York City, where she obtained work at the First Baptist Church on 79th and Broadway in Manhattan. She worked at this church from 2004 until 2013, both as organist/pianist and secretary/archivist. In 2005 she continued her music theory work by studying for the PhD at Columbia University, but left the program in 2007, the year she began analyzing the music of rock band Interpol on her blog Music Theory & Interpol. After a two month residency at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Switzerland in 2008, studying the manuscripts of American composer Morton Feldman, Meg began—while continuing her work as an organist—to explore other avenues of the music business as a freelancer, acting at various times as event planner, publicist, executive director (Ear to Mind), blogger, music reviewer, and writer, mostly in the nonprofit sector. She started her blogs kleineKultur (retired in 2012) and Meg’s New Music Blog in 2008 and 2010, respectively, as outlets for her music reviews and general thoughts about music culture. She’s also written for the Amie St., OUPblog, bachtrack.com, New Music Box, and Vive Magazine.

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In 2011 Meg co-founded the indie rock band Faulkner Detectives as co-vocalist and synthesizer player, and began to write music in earnest, having written very little before that time. In 2012 Meg entered the publishing industry as an assistant editor; she continues to work in publishing as a development editor. In 2013 she began working with a DAW (Studio One by Presonus) to write electronic music, and shortly thereafter began releasing songs as death of codes. After this time she also participated in several collaborations with other artists and began another solo project called pillar of garbage. In 2016 she gave her first—and, as of yet, only—live performance as death of codes at the Stork Club in Oakland, CA. In 2017 she started her music analysis/interviews podcast Sound Meets Sound; that same year she began working on female:pressure’s FACTS survey of gender in electronic music festival line ups, and has been the project manager for FACTS since 2019. In 2018 she performed an hourlong organ recital in Berkeley, CA and premiered Herzlich by Matthew Hough, which was written for her and commissioned by the University of California. In 2020 she founded the music label D Pillar Records, in large part to be able to catalogue her various projects in one place. Her work as death of codes has been mentioned or featured in The Bushwick Daily, The Wire Magazine UK, and WhiteLight//WhiteHeat, among others.

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In 2021 Meg began training as an actor, primarily in Meisner technique. She began auditioning for student and independent films and theatre in 2022, and played Christine in the student film Smile, Dylan in August 2022 and Mrs Cesaro in Arlene in December 2022.