compositions

was commissioned by the Liminal Space contemporary ensemble in 2013.

One of the more influential pieces of music written by one of my undergraduate professors was Rob Maggio’s Bacarole (seven mad gods who rules the sea).  The compositional structure takes the musical material of Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words, deconstructs it, and then uses the deconstructed material as the slowly developing palette for the piece until it leads to a powerful emotional climax that resolves itself with the original Song Without Words played as the epilogue.

This concept, one that I sometimes refer to as a “reverse development”, is something I’ve used in several of my pieces, and it felt like an appropriate technique to use as a basis for this piece – a tribute to one of my favorite piano solo composers who heavily influenced my youth, and a tribute to one of my favorite of his compositions to both play and to hear.  La cathédrale engloutie, or The Sunken Cathedral, resonates so strongly with my emotional core with its beauty and its simultaneous simplicity and complexity, and this commission gave me the opportunity to express my love for the piece in my own unique way – an interpretation that I hope stands enough on its own as well as doing justice to the original.

was commissioned by the Portland Percussion Group in 2012.

During my graduate composition studies at the University of Oregon, I became great friends with a lot of the percussion department and its members, performing as a guest member in some of the concerts and recitals.  It was after one of these concerts that the percussion department head at the time, Charles Dowd, gave me an open invite to write a piece for his ensemble.  I started sketching a piece soon after, but it went unfinished as I had to focus on my studies and my thesis.

Even though I had only written the opening gesture in that sketch, something about what I was trying to achieve with it continued to resonate with me even as my musical voice continued to evolve, and ten years later when the Portland Percussion Group asked me to write them a piece in which three members were my colleagues during my time at the University of Oregon, it felt like the right opportunity to take that initial unfinished sketch and offer them a complete rendition as a tribute to our time and history together.

Moon of Eris is a representation of the subtle and gradual rise and fall of chaos coupled with the instability and imperfection of memory.

was commissioned by David Constantine, the Assistant Principal Percussionist of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, who requested that I write him solo timpani literature that placed more emphasis on melodic and lyrical content rather than percussive and rhythmic virtuosity.

The piece is dedicated to Charles Dowd in honor of his legacy, for all he did for percussion in the Pacific Northwest and for granting me numerous performing and compositional opportunities with the University of Oregon percussion department.

Timpani Forces was world premiered by David Constantine in April 2011 in New Orleans, LA. It was also accepted into the 9th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music in the summer of 2011, and was performed by Chris Whyte, the Director of Percussion Studies at Western Oregon University..

Movements 1 and 2:

Movements 3 and 4:

was written for the Hundredth Monkey Ensemble in Eugene, Oregon. I started writing the piece in early 2004 after my girlfriend of several years and I were giving our relationship a second try after a very messy and emotional breakup a couple of months prior. At the time, I remember having a clear picture in my head of standing at a fork in the road looking at two paths – our current relationship trajectory path that, while rocky, would have eventually led to marriage and family and the happiness that comes with that, and an alternate path in which our future together even as friends was completely unknown.

The emotional whirlwind I was going through during all of this did not deter my approach of this other path with optimism – the idea that if our relationship didn’t lead to a lifelong partnership in matrimony, the alternative would still lead to something wonderful at some point in our lives. The Other Path is my musical expression of this outlook, a melancholy yet optimistic perspective on potential heartbreak. It’s meant to capture the stillness of standing at the fork in the road, and the acknowledgement that the alternate path, despite representing loss and sadness for a life path that would have been beautiful but can never be can still be something that can become beautiful in its own way.

Almost a decade later, the piece now also represents a peaceful reflection on said path and the humble gratitude of what the two of us now hold – one of the strongest and most heartfelt lifelong friendships that I will ever have.

was written during my graduate tenure at the University of Oregon. The text was taken from the show Farscape; it’s an eulogy that was written for one of the main characters that had died.

was commissioned as a part of a University of Oregon workshop with Quattro Mani and was the first piece of music I wrote as a graduate student. It was menat to be symbolic of my “Shift” from the east coast to the west coast, as well as the “shift” from whole-tone to chromatic scales and pitch sets. At the time I had just discovered Ligeti’s piano etudes which were a clear influence.

is a solo electronic work that was written in honor of one of my good friends who informed me that her parents had collectively committed suicide. It was originally written to serve as a backdrop for live performance.

is the revised and updated promotional video for the Tulane University Marching Band that plays prior to our pregame performance in Yulman Stadium.  Audio was created by Andrew Szypula, video was created by me.

is a flash video game created by my brother Felix for which I was responsible for all of the music and some of the sound effects. It’s playable on both Kongregate and itch.io. The itch.io site has a place where you can download the soundtrack for a donation of $1 or more.

is an animated short that I created because at that time, no YouTube video existed that featured Steve Reich’s Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards”. The video is eight different runs of me playing First Person Tetris in Dark Mode displayed simultaneously in a circular pattern with some basic minimalistic video-compositional ideas that I thought mimicked the minimalist nature of Reich’s piece.

is a promotional video i created for the Tulane University Marching Band. The video currently plays on the jumbotron of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome prior to our pregame performance.