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Sophie was a cat. She belonged to my aunt and uncle—as much as any cat belongs to someone. Being allergic, I am not a cat guy so one may wonder why I've written a song in memory of a feline. When Sophie passed after away after multiple surgeries there was a lot of heart ache and sadness. For me it is easier to craft a song than a heartfelt note of sympathy, this is the main reason that I composed this song.
A virtuosic little piano piece composed for my sister Anna's birthday. It uses a 9-note ostinato pattern to drive the music along. There are a lot of ideas in this piece that continue to manifest themselves in my music.
In Spring is a song cycle composed on texts by Emily Dickinson. These are the original notes:
These are two short pieces for solo double-bass inspired by Snoopy, a childhood hero of mine.
original program notes:
Based on poetry of Ogden Nash, this is my first effort at composing for voice. I was proud of how these songs turned out. I did a fair bit of research about writing for voice and setting text while composing these. I still remember many of the things I learned writing these and use it when composing music for voice today.
This was composed as a birthday gift for my sister-in-law Jainie. The concept is lighthearted and pokes fun at some of her foibles. I included poems in the score (one per movement) as additional little jabs.
I. Café Éternel
Do as the Romans do when you’re in Rome,
(Or as the locals when you’re not at home.)
So in England, you see,
It’s best to drink tea.
But not her, she’ll drink coffee with foam
This was my first large ensemble composition, written as my major undergraduate composition project. It's a series of four variations on an old hymn-song. Each variation draws it's stylistic inspiration from the text. I remember putting a lot of effort into the different stylistic ideas, especially moving from a heavily dissonant variation into a Bach-like chorale-fugue. It was very self important and very clumsy. The fascinating thing is how different the ideas and aesthetics of this music are from what I do now.
The last project I worked on with Seen Performance was to be a series of series of short works created through round-robin style collaboration that join in the social mingling at local house parties, challenging where we see performance.
The last project I worked on with Seen Performance was to be a series of series of short works created through round-robin style collaboration that join in the social mingling at local house parties, challenging where we see performance.
When the doors open, the show begins.
The stage is scattered with wooden dowels and pvc fittings, but "performers" are absent. Three FOH Ladies in pretty dresses talk of clothing and whimsically burst into tiny ensemble dances. They generate a friendly mood, guiding viewers to become a single entity. Before the starting ritual is done, the audience – now a group – has built the set: two human scale boxes out of modular sections (ingeniously designed by Shana McKay Burns to play with the viewer’s visual perception of physical boundary). The Group fulfills a moment of choreography as they play together to decipher the correct construction method, and bring a new level of attention to the “stage” where the “performers” belong.
