Two new songs: Whitman Fragments

where to buy Pregabalin online I’m so happy to share these two recordings from last spring. The amazing Celine Mogielnicki and I premiered Whitman Fragments, currently a set of two songs which is slowly growing into more, for voice and piano. The two we performed, As the water follows the moon and How Strong, are pandemic products, and though short, had a long gestation. I think they reflect both a stoicism in living through our present moment, and the awe at discovering and understanding a bit more about who these people really are that we spent so much time with over the past few pandemic years. You can read more about the piece and have a listen here

Where have you been?

Hingoli
Greetings! It has been some time since I shared anything new on this site. Composing and getting my music out there has absolutely taken a back seat during the pandemic. So much so that at this point, I’ve got nothing lined up, and I’m just trying to make it through to the relative calmness of summer 2022 where I’ll hopefully have more space to think and work. While I’m hoping this slow down in public creative output is temporary, I really don’t know what the future holds (musically speaking), and I’m surprised at how long it took me to get to what follows. All of that said, I’m really excited to share two new-ish pieces with you all which I just posted: Mercurial Shadows (for Gideon), for oboe and electronics, and Vox Siderum, for violin, cello, and piano.

Mercurial Shadows was commissioned by the amazing Ben Buergel, and was the very last gig I had prior to the pandemic shutting everything down. Ben played it on Feb 27th, 2020, at the Atlas Theater in DC on the Intersections Festival. I wrote it as a response to my middle child’s period of hearing loss.

You can read more about Mercurial Shadows (for Gideon) and have a listen here.

Vox Siderum was commissioned by the Maryland State Music Teachers Association for a premiere initially scheduled in the fall of 2021, but this got pushed back until December 2022 due to Covid. I wrote the piece for my friends I’ve met through Balance Campaign, and the commission was intended to be played at the MSMTA’s annual young composer event. It was amazing to meet these 16 young composers, all students in elementary through high school, who are extremely excited about writing music. Sandy Choi, Erin Snedicor, and Liz Hill gave a lovely rendering of the piece – I’m really happy to share the live recording of it, and hope we can do it again some time soon.

You can read more about and listen to Vox Siderum here.

Blue wins Audience Choice Award, spring 2021 updates

I’m writing in today with a bit of very exciting news: Blue, a short film by Ziad Foty that I scored over Summer 2020, just saw its premiere at the Beverly Hills Film Festival, and was selected for the Audience Choice Award of Best Short Film. You can view the trailer for the film here. A huge thank you is due to Ziad and the rest of the creative team for including me on this. I’m so proud of the way this project turned out, in that I got to draw on a lot of my diverse interests as a composer. In addition to the incidental music, I also got to write and record an original song for this one, called Breaking Away (sung by the incredibly talented Nadine El-Bayoumi Foty).

While I’ve been fortunate this past year compared to many in the arts, writing music was incredibly hard to make time for within all the pandemic-related craziness. I’m also kind of shocked that I’ve let updates on this site slide for as long as I have: I knew it had been awhile, but…Dec 2019? I’m sorry, dear reader. In summary: the pandemic has dried up many opportunities for performances this past year, and, much of my energy has been focused on my family since March 2020. My very last live performance was right before everything shut down in March (Mercurial Shadows, for Gideon, a solo oboe and electronics commission that was featured on the 2020 Atlas Intersections Festival), and while I’m a bit ashamed to have not edited the audio into a presentable recording 13 months later, I hope to get to it as soon as my semester closes out at Catholic University. In addition to composing the music for Blue this year, I also did the music to a filmed short play festival at CUA in the fall (and will hopefully be able to post some highlights shortly), and I’ve been working ever so slowly on a new commission for a piano trio that will hopefully see the light of day at the end of 2021. Posting all of this will hopefully motivate me to stick to my word and get back in the studio.

Out now: commercial release of “Veiled” on Wendy Richman’s “Vox/Viola”

I’m so excited to share that Wendy Richman’s first solo album Vox/Viola is now available on New Focus Recordings! Out now on streaming/digital platforms, and in hard copy after the new year. All of the tracks on this were commissioned by and for Wendy, and are linked together through their use of her dual talents as violist and singer. My piece, Veiled, started out as a commission for Wendy from the Strathmore Music Center in summer 2011, and was revised several times over the years into its present state. Please take a listen to this amazing album: I’m humbled to be included alongside everyone else that’s been on this project over the years, and so happy that it is finally out there to hear.

Posted in News, Solo

New recording: Invention, for piano and electronics

Back in December I premiered a new work for piano and electronics called Invention. You can read about the piece here, and have a listen to a live recording of the performance below.

Posted in News, Solo

back at Chez Monk…

Here’s a recent video of me performing Chez Monk, a solo piano piece I wrote a few years ago. I decided to dust it off for our composition division recital at Catholic, which we did on 2/28/2018. Enjoy!:

Posted in News, Solo

Video of Where the Sidewalk Ends

Back in December I led a group composition project at Catholic University, where I teach. Called Scenes from Catholic University, the project paired students and faculty from the composition and piano divisions together to create a work that was largely inspired by Schumann’s Op 15 Kinderszenen. You can watch my colleague Nikita Fitenko play my contribution, Where the Sidewalk Ends, below, and read more about the piece here

Posted in News, Solo

Video of The Initiation performance

Back in November The Initiation went up for one performance at the Georgetown Waterfront Park Labyrinth. This site-specific project, in the city I’ve lived in for almost 10 years, is a type of collaboration I’ve wanted to engage with for a long time. I was so happy with the results (and that the weather played nice). Below is a full video of the performance. While I’m certainly not abandoning traditional concert hall projects or anything, I really hope to do this type of work again soon. Big thanks to sculptor Dawn Whitmore for thinking this whole thing up, and to the amazing singers that put in so much time to pull this off.

Posted in News, Vocal

New year, new live recordings:

Greetings: a quick post to let you know that I’ve added some recordings of some recent pieces to my pages up here. The Inscape Chamber Orchestra gave a solid premiere of Get Up in May, and you can here the second movement Haze here. The Catholic University Symphony, under the direction of Simeone Tartaglione, premiered …of such light last April, and I have some clips from the performance here.

Posted in Chamber, News, Orchestra

The Initiation

I am very excited to present my newest collaboration, The Initiation, with sculptor Dawn Whitmore. Dawn commissioned me to make a piece for four singers that is intended to be performed with an amazing wooden sculpture of ladders that she’s been making. We are putting together a free outdoor performance on November 18th at the Labyrinth at the Georgetown Waterfront Park in DC. The music should start as the sun goes down, ca. 4:45. We’re inviting people to come check out the sculpture starting at 4:00pm. Below is a preview video Dawn made of the sculpture with a bit of my music, and here’s a link to read more details at Dawn’s site. I’m really excited to be doing something site-specific and outdoors in my city, and, I couldn’t be happier with the merry band of singers we’ve gathered for the event: Rachel Evangeline Barham, Allison Clendaniel, Shauna Kreidler Michels, and Deborah Sternberg are killing it. Hope to see you there! If you miss it, we are planning more performances for the spring (stay tuned).

Posted in News, Vocal