Bio

I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, growing up with two elder brothers, my mother and stepfather (with yearly visits with my father in the summer).  My early interest in film music lead to a desire to become a composer, a desire I pursued at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.  While there, I was exposed to a vast canon of contemporary music and quickly abandoned the idea of film music in favor of composing in the Western classical tradition, studying primarily with Richard Hoffmann, and taking composition classes with Param Vir, Randy Coleman and Pieter Snapper.  After spending five years at Oberlin (pursuing degrees in composition and Latin literature), I took a year off, working as a substitute schoolteacher in Florida.  During this time, my separation from normal music making activities left something of a void in me and encouraged me to renew my studies at the Eastman School of Music.  While there, I worked closely with Sydney Hodkinson, Augusta Read Thomas and Chris Rouse, earning an MA and PhD in composition and producing a wide body of rather successful works.

During my studies at Eastman, I won numerous awards in composition, though I have no interest in listing them here.  Of much greater interest to me is teaching, which I have been doing since 2000.   During my Eastman years and after, I taught at various institutions such as Hamilton College, Syracuse University and Northwestern University, teaching subjects ranging from music theory and aural skills to composition and East Asian contemporary music.  I find teaching to be a tremendous challenge and a ready source of both frustration and exhilaration (not unlike composing).

In terms of composing, I have had the pleasure with working with many fine performers and institutions and receiving splendid performances of my music.  I have recently been commissioned by the Frost Wind Ensemble, Ars Mobilis, the Fromm Foundation and the Proper Glue Percussion Duo, among numerous others, and my works have been performed throughout the United States, Canada and select locations in France.  My pieces usually begin from an extra-musical impetus, often literary, and I strive to make a palpable connection between that impetus and the finished work, however successful or unsuccessful that connection ends up being.  My most recent literary interests have centered around the poetry of Pablo Neruda, the writings of Mervyn Peake, and the historical and mythographic work of Robert Graves, especially as pertains to the poetic implications of the ancient Beth-Luis-Nion tree calendar.  It was from this study of the latter work that I came to name my son Rowan, after the quickbeam tree that coincides with the second lunar month.

I am currently teaching composition at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN with my wife, Winnie Cheung (a composer and pianist) and our precocious son, Rowan.