I’m composer, pianist, and landscape architect, Paul Sayre. I spent my early childhood on our family’s little farm in Letart, West Virginia — a tiny plot of Eden in the verdant, rolling foothills that border the mountains deep in Appalachia. Since then I’ve lived in many places, done a lot of things, and had the great fortune and privilege to know and work with many wonderful and extraordinary people.

Music, design, and ecology are my passions. They’re my life’s work, but I have other interests, too. I’m an avid plantsman, and I’m keenly interested in conservation, renewable energy, and social equity. I also enjoy teaching, traveling, painting, drawing, wood working, movies, tv, and reading. I’ve learned that I’m happiest when I’m making things. The specific mediums and materials are largely of secondary importance.

Through my extensive experience with making, I’ve come to believe that the underlying principles involved in making anything are surprisingly similar regardless of the medium. To me, writing good music and designing exceptional space have a lot in common, and composing a sentence and building a barn are not as different as they might first appear.

I believe strongly in the principle of Verum Ipsum Factum or “truth through making”— that true knowledge and awareness are not acquired through passive transmittance but rather through the process of doing. I take my work very seriously, but not myself. I’m something of a jack-of-all-trades in endless pursuit of mastery of one. At the end of the day, I’m probably best described simply as “a maker.”