• a musical journey of whimsy
• a representational advocacy for flow, relaxation, and adaptation
• a continuing exploration of me desire to increase performer agency within the framework of my creative voice

Leaf was commissioned by and written for Roberta Michel with support for its creation and world premiere from nienteForte Contemporary Music.

More information about the project can be found on its primary website.

I’ve recently come to realize that this mental segregation has actively hindered an important part of my musical identity in my work, one that I’ve developed and loved for decades. I’ve since been determined to break down those barriers and trust that all of my musical influences and skills can work harmoniously to strengthen my creative output.

Polarities was written in this spirit, a quick and light-hearted etude that is a love letter to two of my strongest and oldest musical in????uences – minimalist composer Steve Reich and UK-based electronica duo Plaid. It also represents my continuing journey to embrace and be true to my entire creative self.

Polarities was premiered at New Music on the Bayou 2024 by Oliver Molina and Greg Lyons on June 8th, 2024.

The first movement, Distant Haze, represents the imperfect recollection of individual past memories. It takes its primary thematic material, at first purely acoustic and unmanipulated, and then recalls it as randomly-controlled background noise with (mostly) slight variations in tempo.

The second movement, Total Recall, represents the interaction of the present with various iterations of the immediate past as pure and deliberately measured canons.

The third movement, Spacetimes, represents the interaction of one state of present spacetime with other spacetimes (theorized as a possible fifth-dimension in string theory; more commonly analogous to what is now popularly known as the multiverse theory) in simultaneity. It replicates the primary thematic material in real spacetime but with variations in pitch and energy as alternate spacetimes that can consequently lead to unknown long-term changes in those alternative spacetimes. It also echoes themes from the first two movements.

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When Dylan commissioned me to write a piece for his senior recital, I was originally going to write it as either a solo trumpet work or a trumpet duet. When the idea of including interactive electronics started to take shape, it was both appealing and daunting – it had been over a decade since I had done any serious Max programming aside from a few scant exercises, and most of my experience had only been working with the MIDI side of Max.

In the end, I opted to tackle it because I feel like I have a lot to say in the electronic media space, particularly interactive music and art. I immediately resonated with Max during my undergraduate years and my passion for electronic music led me to have it be an integral component to my masters thesis. Re-immersing myself in Max, reminding myself of its diverse capabilities, and constantly discovering and creating new ways to implement my creative vision has been like rekindling the relationship of a long lost close friend – familiar yet new, awkward but comfortable, inspiring and joyful.

One of the more influential pieces of music written by one of my undergraduate professors was Rob Maggioâ€s Bacarole (seven mad gods who rules the sea).  The compositional structure takes the musical material of Mendelssohnâ€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 Iâ€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.

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 of the Portland Percussion Group.