home
works
press
resume
sounds
thought
contact
here are a few thoughts on some of my pieces:
QAT: the original program note read "how many A's could a good player play if a good player could play good?" this piece (a reinterpretation of a "piano concerto") was originally written for kamilla arku and the timothy dwight chamber players. kamilla is a wonderful pianist and wonderful person. in writing this piece for her, i decided to discard her penchant for playing with thoughtful beauty and sensitivity. i decided to give her a minimalist monster to sink her teeth into. since its premiere, this piece has also been played by the heroic timothy andres on piano.
ANTHEM: this piece was written as a commission from artist rachel mason. her concept was to create an anthem that showed the weird ironies of nationalism and patriotism. computer scientist eric jensen compiled lyrics by using a markov process on 193 national anthems. i tried to create a similar effect by sorting through about 50 anthems, picking out the most generic musical qualities and properties. the result is dazzlingly weird and alarmingly familiar.
ELEMENTS: this is one of the projects i'm working on now. it is scored for choir, clarinet, electric guitar, string quartet, and percussion. the text and musical ideas come from euclid's definitions of geometric objects. though obviously presented in translation from the ancient greek, these mathematical definitions make for some striking poetry in english. the fact that they were not written as poetry, however, lends me greater emotional comfort with the often upsetting concept of text setting.
for a more detailed list of works, see resume.