Biography
I was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. on February 20, 1959. The first child of an electrical engineer and an elementary school music teacher, in the years to follow I became the oldest brother to four other bright-eyed Furfine children. Saint Louis was to be my home for the first 23 years of my life. Already at the age of three, I showed a strong interest in learning to play the piano and I remember listening to my mother play Beethoven's piano sonatas in the living room after putting me to bed around 8 o'clock. She would play while waiting for the doorbell to ring and the first of many guests to arrive at their frequent social evenings. In the magic quarter-hours before falling asleep I would find myself loving the sonatas and the sound of cheerful adults enjoying each other's company. Music and parties...
I learned how to play the piano and to read music and books at an early age. I was what they called "a good student" and have to admit school was pretty easy. My grandmother said I "should become a doctor" but I surprised her when, around the age of 11, I decided to become a drummer. I had been to a school party where there was a real live rock band. The volume was somewhat unbearable in that school gym but the percussionist had me all but hypnotized. Bewitched. My parents held out for a while, but finally at the age of 13, they gave me my first drumset. At age 16 I formed a band with a few of my more talented schoolmates - "Phoenix" - we called it. It sounded cool... We played around at a lot of school parties and had a great time. Being a percussionist gave me an identity, and more than once I was accepted in new circles because I was a drummer, when otherwise I would certainly have been ignored, made fun of, or bullied just for the hell of it. Towards my junior and senior year I began to realize that against all my better judgement, I was going to try and become a professional musician.
Good fortune seemed to smile on my decision. The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
boasted an incredible percussion section. I began to study timpani with Rick
Holmes and percussion with John Kasica. Both were
graduates of the Julliard School of Music and received their instruction from
Elden "Buster" Bailey and Saul Goodman.
My success as a musician is due in great part to them. In a short time I was
prepared for university auditions, and my dad and I started travelling around
to different schools. I was accepted at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern,
Tulane, and Washington Universities but I bravely chose to let them carry
on as best they could without me. I decided to go to Indiana University in
Bloomington to study with Prof. George Gaber. His instruction proved valuable,
but after a year I decided to return to the Saint Louis Conservatory to continue
studying with Kasica and Holmes. Over the following five years they would
turn me into a professional timpanist and percussionist. Around the age of
22 I realized they had begun to look on me as someone who should "go
get a job".
Already I was the timpanist of the Saint Louis Orchestra, a professional chamber group which performed at the Art Museum. My passion for language and literature had however kept pace with my passion for music. Rather than "go drive a cab" in NYC waiting for a percussion or timpani job, I decided to accept the full-scholarship grant Washington University offered me to study Comparative Literature and work as research assistant. I learned French quickly, and was given the opportunity to study one summer at Tours, in the Loire Valley. I then proceeded to tour the continent for a couple of months seeking and finding adventure. My efforts at Wash U. earned me a Masters Degree 1982 and a Fulbright Scholarship for the following academic year - I would be able to return to France for an entire year of research and employment as an English Language assistant at the Lycée Georges Clémenceau in Reims, capital of the Champagne region.
Taking advantage of the security my grant offered, I decided to anticipate
my move to Europe by a few months to see what the chances were of finding
a timpani job somewhere. I sent of resumes to several European orchestras.
I borrowed some money from a kind elderly aunt of mine and began my tour of
the European capitals. Eventually I set up shop in Munich. The city was full
of symphony orchestras, was in the center of Europe, and I discovered that
Americans had succeeded in winning auditions in Germany despite pro-national
sentiment - which demonstrates the fairness of the auditions and their commitment
to high quality. But after three of four months of jobless job-hunting, my
funds were all but depleted. 
I
decided to look for a job in the meantime. But every restaurant, shop, and
beer hall I applied to for work had to refuse me because, as a non-European,
I had no work permit. After several unproductive days of job-hunting, I found
myself standing in front of Mrs. Baker's California Cookie Shop.
I wondered "Could this be a sign?" I thought "They wouldn't dare turn a well-groomed
but needy American away." But though the cookies were American, the owner
was not. His wife was, and perhaps out of patriotism persuaded him to help
me in some way. He explained that if I could somehow convince the folks at
the Employment Office to give me a permit, he would give me a job. Off I went
to see what I could do. Needless to say I was determined to say almost anything
to get the Permit, and in fact I did ... say almost anything. I said I came
from a long line of California cookie bakers. It was in my blood. My grandfather
practically invented the chocalate chip cookie. I personally was only in Europe
to gather new recipes for our family enterprise. I was more qualified than
any German anywhere for the extremely difficult job I was applying for ("clerk"),
therefore in all fairness they should give me the permit. Like a snowball
down a steep hill, I added new elements of family cookie lore with each breath.
The kind lady sensed not only that I was probably pulling her leg, but that
I really wanted that job. So she gave me the permit and I began to work 30
hours a week baking cookies (a family first). I was afloat again, the bubble
hadn't burst and I realized I could hold out until the fall and the Fulbright
started.
Then one day the phone rang. It was the Orchestra Sinfonica della
Radiotelevisione Italiana in Turin. They wanted me to come play timpani
for a month. Many months after having written to them (and dozens of other
European orchestras), they had decided to look for me in Saint Louis - but
I wasn't there. How many cookies had I baked for naught! I could have stayed
home!! I packed my bags and moved to Italy in 
September,
1982. The very day I arrived in Turin, the Rolling Stones gave a sold-out
concert in the local stadium. That evening Italy won the World Cup of Soccer.
The streets were mobbed, the people in ecstasy. It felt great to be in Italy,
although I had no idea I'd be staying for so long. In January of 1983 I was
invited to assume the timani position in the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana
in Palermo. It was time to travel even further south. Palermo? Over the next
three years, I would work in Turin, Palermo, and also in Geneva with the Orchestre
de la Suisse-Romande. At a certain point, in 1985, I found myself
renting two apartments in Italy 1000 miles apart and living out of a hotel
in France across the border from Switzerland. And I thought "Is this
what I had hoped for?" There was no reason to answer that question, because
it soon became clear that for various reasons, only Palermo would be able
to offer me steady employment and room for future growth.
The decision to move to Palermo meant preparing large orchestral programs
every week with different conductors. The pressure was on daily, and after
work the call of the beaches of Mondello and Sferracavallo was alluring. As
in the rest of Europe, Palermo closed down from 1 to 4 p.m. Occasionally I
would windsurf and play endless games with the sea.
Other days I would doze or reflect on the North German symphonic repertoire
under the sub-tropical sun. In the next few years I would have the pleasure
of working with Bruno Leonardo Gelber, Steven Bishop Kovacevich, Anne-Sophie
Mütter, Gilbert Vargas, Pinchas Steinberg, Peter Maag, and others more or
less famous than they deserve. I became the Orchestra's piano tuner
and spent long hours perfecting my craft. In 1992 I applied for and obtained
the post of Lettore di Lingua Inglese at the Universitá
di Palermo and my lunch hours in the sun were abandoned to make room
for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language and Literature. I had thus
succeeded in turning all of my youthful passions into (under-)paid employment,
and I lost no time in diving ever deeper into my chosen fields.
It's not that I missed those hours in the sun. I never really tanned much
anyway. But I missed the water, the light on the waves. And the wind:
the delicate suprises of the breeze and the soulful power of the sculpting
gusts. I began to accept invitations to sail with friends who had boats.
At first I feared the
sun, the nausea, the unknown. Later, coming back to town in the early evening,
I felt stronger, more serene, and hungrier for adventure than before. In 1994,
I purchased a 7.5 meter sailboat. After a few years, a larger one. I would
learn to govern, race and live on sailboats. Today my passion for the world
of sailing is intact and a vital element of my inner balance. Where does sailing
fit in with my landlocked roots? It does not. Like a Ficus Magnolius, I sail
as the mature tree at a certain point sends new roots down into the rocky
soil, as if to say "I have chosen yet another place from which to reach to
the sky."