During the pandemic, I was struggling to find commissions. This left me with a certain amount of free time, which I tried to fill with personal projects. One day, after teaching my orchestration class, I was grading an assignment I had given for the past 10 years, orchestrating the first 8 bars of a Grieg … Read more
In writing Ruins Upon Ruins, I set about creating a form that would best represent the creation/destruction cycle, but would also provide a way of building on top of exisiting musical structures. I decided to find a way of creating a city of music from scratch, then systematically destroying it. In this way, I could … Read more
‘Las Guitarras Azules’ is a concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra written for and dedicated to guitarist Nathan Fischer. The piece is greatly indebted to flamenco traditions, and its multiple sections are based on traditional flamenco song forms (bulerias, solea, seguiriyas, guajiras). It is a fiercely difficult work on account of its extensive scordatura (4 … Read more
Written for the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, ‘Upon Mystic Places’ is based loosely on a poem by Stephen Crane. The piece is a concertino for horn and slightly expanded sinfonietta ensemble, in which the solo horn acts as a complex character moving through a dark and fantastic world, interacting with other characters equally strange. … Read more
‘Yellowwood’ is a work for orchestra with optional video. The piece represents a year in the life of Yellowwood State Forest near Bloomington, IN, and is organized according to the seasons. The third section of the work, ‘Spring,’ features a musical parody (in the manner of the parodies of the early Renaissance) of a hymn … Read more
Concierto de Milonga was commissioned by Solungga Liu and the Bowling Green State University New Music Ensemble. It was premiered at the Bowling Green New Music Festival in 2015. This piano concerto is based on Argentine tango of the Golden Era. There are two kinds of music at work here: the traditional tango style, represented … Read more
‘Fairytale’ was originally written for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and premiered in 2002 under Cliff Colnot. It was subsequently revised in 2012 and performed by the IU University Orchestra under Mannie Laureano. The piece is modeled after an archetypal fairytale and divided into three Campbellian sections: the entrance into fairyland, an encounter with something … Read more