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.  In general, I think of my pieces (especially orchestral ones) as landscapes and my belief in extreme attention to detail often yields gleaming surfaces underpinned by very tightly controlled structures, usually stemming from a single motivic or harmonic source.  My music usually begins 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, Eugenio de Andrade and Dylan Thomas, the writings of Mervyn Peake, and the historical and mythographic work of Robert Graves, especially as pertains to the poetic implications of the Beth-Luis-Nion tree calendar.

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 children, Rowan and Linden.