Category Archives: News

I’m very excited that Wendy Richman will be reviving Highway Music this winter, in a newly revised version that will have its premiere on the New Music Gathering in Baltimore this January. This piece, for a singing violist + electronics, was commissioned by Strathmore Music Center and premiered by Wendy there in 2011. Wendy will be pairing my piece with Jason Eckardt’s to be held… for a short set on the Intrumental+ segment of the program.

I’ve got a few projects in the works that are slowly taking shape over the next few weeks: a set of Scarlatti-inspired piano pieces, and some new percussion music. Details to be announced shortly.

New Morse Code premiered Transit last spring down here in Washington, DC. Here’s a link to a really nice video from them shredding in the beautiful Washington College concert hall.

And, last but certainly not least, I’m now a tenured professor at CUA, and after seven years of teaching I’m on my first sabbatical this semester. Plans for the fall away include writing, more writing, and going on runs with Lev (because he’s finally big enough for a jogging stroller!).

This year’s concert season went out with a bang: May 17th saw two premieres on the same day in DC (Atlantic Reed Consort doing Brightness Catching, and Inscape Chamber Orchestra playing my new version of What I Decided to Keep), which came on the heels of New Morse Code premiering Transit at the beginning of April. I hope to post recordings of Brightness Catching and Transit shortly. What I Decided to Keep, released on Inscape’s American Aggregate last fall, is available most places music is sold (iTunes, Amazon, etc). That album also got a nice write up in the April edition of Gramaphone, which you can check out by clicking here.

I’m really excited to share a live recording of Sounding Dawn, my new piece for double bass and electronics commissioned by Ira Gold. Ira and I premiered the piece on a tour this fall that included performances at the University of Louisville, University of Michigan, Oberlin College, and Cleveland Institute of Music. The piece was inspired by our shared love of running, particularly those that are occasionally taken as the sun comes up (…occasionally). I think Ira did a fantastic job with this – the various timbral contortions I put him through aren’t easy – and I’m looking forward to playing it again with him in the future. Check out the recording here.

Coming up this winter, Chicago’s Spektral Quartet will be playing Passage through the city, a piece written for them in 2012, at venues in Chicago (Jan. 9th and 10th), Grand Rapids, MI (Feb. 8th), and right here in Washington, DC (Feb. 12th). Spektral has been making a name for themselves over the last few seasons with incredible playing on a truly diverse array of projects (check out their Mobile Miniatures project!). Info/tickets links are on my performances page: come and check them out if you’re in the area of any of those concerts (I’ll be at the DC show).

My last bit of news for 2014 is that I just put the finishing touches on a new piece for DC’s own Atlantic Reed Consort: Brightness Catching, written for the unique combination of Oboe, Clarinet, Alto Sax, Bassoon, and Bass Clarinet. Be on the lookout for a premiere this coming spring.

It is finally here! Inscape Chamber Orchestra’s new album American Aggregate, the follow-up to their grammy-nominated Sprung Rhythm, was officially released on August 26th. Working with Inscape and the folks at Sono Luminus was an amazing experience: we are all incredibly proud of how it sounds, and I feel lucky to be in the same company with composers Nathan Lincoln-DeCusatis, Armando Bayolo, Joseph Hallman, Dan Visconti, Julia Adolphe, and Gregory Spears. This is a very special disc, in that it is formatted for multi-channel Pure Audio Blu-Ray playback. For those of you with a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker setup, prepare to be blown away! For those of us with a vanilla stereo playback setup, trust me, it sounds awesome. What I decided to keep, in a new arrangement commissioned by Inscape, is an homage to Bela Bartok’s 5th String Quartet. Using elements from jazz, funk, and prog rock, What I decided to keep follows a rhetorical logic similar to Bartok’s celebrated work. The piece is dedicated to Martin Bresnick, my composition teacher that first introduced me to Bartok’s quartet, whose example I try to follow in working with my own students at CUA. Check out a promo clip of What I decided to keep here. Buy the album at places like iTunes and Amazon.

Back at the end of March, Stephen Story and the Carnegie Mellon University Wind Ensemble gave the premiere of Lift. Lift is only my second work for wind ensemble, and the first one that was conceived and written specifically for this instrumentation. (Bounce, premiered last November by David Vickerman and the winds from TCNJ, is an arrangement of an earlier orchestra piece.) It was a really great experience to work with these players, and also a lot of fun to be back at my undergraduate stomping grounds in Pittsburgh, PA. Read more about the piece and take a listen here.

As I take a step back from teaching for the summer, things for next season are starting to come into sharper focus. Upcoming projects for next year will include a new piece for bass and electronics for Ira Gold, a bassist with the National Symphony and Peabody faculty member, and a new work for Hannah Collins and Mike Compitello, otherwise known as the amazing cello and percussion duo New Morse Code.