Sophia

<table class="uiInfoTable profileInfoTable noBorder"><tr><td class="data"><div class="data_field">Steven J Farrell is a keyboardist/composer/arranger living near San Jose, California, via Perth, Scotland and Ellesmere Port, England.</div></td></tr><tr><br /><td class="data"><div class="data_field"><div>Steven's musical history begins at the age of 6 when his grandparents bought him a toy Bontempi 'organ' for Christmas. He quickly mastered the toy's 'built-in' songs, which included such delights as 'Jingle Bells' and 'La Cucaracha', before learning to play a number of songs at the infant school summer concert by ear. Such progress was encouraging to his parents, who enrolled him in keyboard lessons and bought him his first 'proper' keyboard - a Casio CT-360 (which I now believe is considered a collector's item on Ebay). He wrote his first song at the age of 7 1/2 over the 'Bossa Nova' preset rhythm. It was called 'Blue Skies'. <br /><br />A couple of keyboards later, he joined the GCSE music class at his school, where his interest in music as a career was fully ignited, joining the school band and beginning to seriously compose and play his own music. After leaving school, Steven played in various bands and kept writing music before moving to Perth in 2003 to study HND Popular Music Performance. It was here that he fully immersed himself in his music, playing in a variety of bands in many different styles, sometimes for fun and sometimes to pass a class. He enjoyed a reputation as a solid, inventive keyboardist with a knack for showy solos. <br /><br />He began work on his first album in 2005, releasing the first track, 'Sophia', on Myspace, to a warm reception. He actually finished it in 2008, but just hasn't burned the songs to proper CDs yet. <br /><br />Steven moved to California in 2007, to live with his wife, Crystal, and has played in a few bands there, the latest being a disco/funk/soul covers band that he has a lot of fun with. <br /><br />He has never played <em>Half-Life</em>.</div></div></td></tr></table>