In 2020 I began a relationship with the Civitasolis Reed Quintet. The instrumentation of the reed quintet (oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon) is rich in possiblity, in that these instruments blend together well while each maintaining a unique color and personality.

Reed Quintet No. 1 is a mix of playfulness and satire. A consistent theme in this piece is the presenting catchy, American sounding tunes in an innocent fashion, and allowing them to gradually develop into dark circus of sin and cynicism. 

I am writing a second reed quintet for the Civitasolis Quintet. We hope to record it and have it released on a record label.

So far, I've completed and recorded two motets of what I'm hoping will one day become a concert length religious choral work. Not far from Maryland lives a community of people that believe in non-violence, forgiveness, simplicity, and community: the Amish! Pennsylvania Dutch, spoken by 300,000 Amish and non-Amish people, differs greatly from German in grammar and lexicon. Its ornate words beget emotions with more heart than standard Latin. Few pieces of classical music have been written in Pennsylvania Dutch in the 21st century, so I decided to take a try.

In 2017, I met an Amish couple on the train back from Chicago. I gave them my address, and I told them I wanted to learn more about their language and culture. Three weeks later, I received a big black dual language Bible in English and the York County dialect of Pennsylvania Dutch. I spent months deciphering the language, finally receiving language coaching from Douglas Maddenford, a non-Amish speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch.

So far, I have set two texts from the Bible to music. I started with Psalm 23 because I was most familiar with the text and multiple musical settings of it. Its pastoral imagery reminded me of Pennsylvania. Matthew 5:38 encapsulates a core Amish believe: love your enemy. Its harsh rhythm creates a rustic interpretation of this selection. 

While not dissonant, these two works weave through a complex sequence of harmonies. To guide the singers, I chose not the piano, but the viola da gamba. This instrument adds a German folksiness to the piece. The gamba was prominent in the Switzerland and southern Germany when the Amish migrated from there to the United States in the 18th century.

I hope to continue setting Pennsylvania Dutch texts to music that one day culminates into a cantata exploring the values and beliefs of Amish people.

"Mountain Piques" is a composition I wrote for the Pique Collective, a Baltimore-based contemporary music ensemble.  It was premiered on October 18, 2018 at the Black Cherry Puppet Theatre, who crafted abstract shapes and choreographed their movement to the music.

The work is a quartet for three acoustic instruments (guitar, flute, and cello) and a fourth musician who, using a laptop computer's trackpad, controls a range of sounds just like a normal instrument.

"Mountain Piques" embraces many classical music archetypes.  Before electronics, composers used the flute’s flutter, the cello’s warmth, and the guitar’s intimacy to convey imagery of nature.  I add a psychedelic quality to the work's pastoralism with audio samples of birds, frogs, and ambience.  Like much classical music, the piece also explores rhythmic complexity, polyphony, and uses four contrasting movements as an expressive canvass.

The slow first movement, "The Rainforest," ends with the metaphor of a ticking clock.  "Bursting at the Brim," the title of the second, scherzo-like movement, comes from a line from “Ode to a Nightingale,” by John Keats.  Electronics this time bring in the sounds of birds, again creating a musical metaphor.  

"The Heaven of Animals" and "Waterfall" are longer and more experimental.  In these movements, sounds of the forest become erie, with undulating pitched rhythms, and an aggressive electronic part.  These movements also contain virtuosic solos in the cello, guitar and flute parts.  One section features a drum with the flute, guitar, and cello perform much like their ancestor instruments from the Middle Ages.  While the flute is normally considered a high pitched instrument, the third movement uses an alto flute to explore a darker, more melancholy side to the flute.

This project took about a year to complete.  I spent seven months writing it, and the Pique Collective spent an additional four months learning to play it.  The Pique Collective, whose vision is to bring new music to alternative venues, reached out to Black Cherry Puppet Theatre to create visuals for the piece.  Puppeteers Michael Lamason, Jeanine Padgett, Emily Schubert, and Alissa Glenn crafted large, abstract shapes and choreographed them to the music.

My song cycles are informed by over ten years of teaching math and working with students of all ages, from elementary school children to prison inmates. "Teacher Tales," to which I authored the lyrics, bears personal witness to an ever growing segment of impoverished citizens. "My Biggest Mistake" is based on a conversation with a Baltimore mother had to work so hard to provide her son with the basic necessities that she regretted even having a him. "The Food Chain" is my cynical reflection on bullying, and "A Serf To Your Wage" parodies the lessons taught in schools that, as Noam Chomsky puts it, manufacture consent. I borrow musical ideas from cabaret, jazz, and twelve-tone music to give these sinister texts an American flavor.  These songs were runner up in the Arcade Emerging Composers Competition.

After "Teacher Tales" I composed "Grief Never Leaves," three apolitical songs influenced by Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder." These songs take influence from post-romantic and feature an oboe. These songs were streamed as a virtual concert from Stages Music Arts in Timonium. Taylor Hillary Bokins and Aaron Thacker performed "Teacher Tales;" Laura Snyderman, Lydia Consilvio, and Lior Willinger performed "Grief Never Leaves."

Early on in my composition career, I became hypnotized by the sound of vibrating piano strings.  Most people distinguish a piano's sound by its attack.  One day while I was experimenting, I recorded myself playing a note on the piano, and then edited out the attack so only the decaying string vibrations could be heard.  I began building entire pieces by splicing together hundreds of recordings of piano strings, like a mosaic.

"Un Jardin" is a work for fixed media in three movements, which Vin Grabill later set to visuals.  It has an extremely angelic tone, beginning with a repeating, warbly, hymnlike chord progression, and leading to an overwhelming climax.  "Ceres," the second movement, is simply a cluster of every piano key at the same time.  The lightness of the piano sounds turns the dissonance into a shimmering texture, highlighting some keys more than others to create melodies inherently connected with sound.  

I continued experimenting with recordings of piano strings in "Pranayama," which sparsely features samples of synthesizer and my own voice to add a tinge of color to the piano sounds.  "After the Storms," incorporates the sounds of electric guitar, handbells, windchimes, buzzing home appliances, and computer synthesis.  It begain as a dance piece choreographed by Danielle Greene and performed at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, also heavily uses piano string recordings.  Later Vin Grabill made it into a video piece.

These three pieces have been featured at a variety of venues.  "After the Storms" was presented at the SEAMUS conference, and "Pranayama" was presented at the International Computer Music Conference.  They've also been shown at the Church of the Holy City in DC, the Vitruvian Gallery in DC, the Tin Roof Brewery in Baton Rouge, and broadcasted on WTJU. 

I wrote "Kings Highway / Stillwell Ave." for piano in 2007 after living in New York City for a year and a half.  I had essentially failed at my first job.  Luckily I found a new one in Virginia, but the process of moving out was extremely cathartic.  New York had been my home.

The last night I spent in my Queens apartment was nightmarish.  Heat radiators were going off, water was dripping from a faucet, and I heard sounds in my own head.  I was also hyper-aware of the sounds I heard when I walked out of my last day at work.  The relief of never having to return quieted my mind enough to hear the sounds of New York's traffic and children laughing.

After composing it and performing it at the Church of the Holy City in Washington, DC, Vin Grabill created a video to accompany it from hundreds of photos I took in New York.  The video was featured at the Rosebud Film Festival.

In addition to Mountain Piques and Reed Quintet No. 1, I've written several other pieces for small ensemble. My personal favorite of these is Lake Pontchartrain, for string sextet.   It captures the stillness of the lake, its cloudy days, and its surrounding bayous, combining it with emotions of sadness, longing, and nostalgia.  

Escape, for bassoon quartet, has been performed in New York, Maryland, Tennessee, and Spain.  It's overall a bleak piece; the dark registers of the bassoons and a hulking contrabassoon solo are mixed with arcs of wailing and quarter tones. 

During COVID, many musicians took their music online, performing together virtually but apart physically. This year I had the chance of working with the Civitasolis Quintet and Music&Friends Chamber Ensemble to write three shorter works: Deep Purring, All the Little Kittens, and The Dragons are My Children.

For several years, I've been working on an Edgar Allan Poe Tryptich for clarinet, piano, violin, and cello. I am hoping to make this work my masterpiece: three large scale movements that push the limits of emotion and virtuosity. Due to its difficulty, I've been having trouble getting this piece performed.

A florid Sonata for Flute, Percussion, and Electronics also sits unperformed in my bottom drawer.

I'm passionate about composing music for one person and speakers. Normally, the piano accompany a musician or vocalist. Not all venues have pianos though, and I wanted to explore a different way of accompanying instruments.

My longest piece to date, Pluto, is written for just one clarinet, and one person operating electronics.  Playing into a microphone, the clarinet interacts with live electronics to create a one-person orchestra.  With techniques such as looping, delay, pitch shift, ring modulation, and aliasing, the clarinet creates a living surreal electroacoustic environment symbolizing interstellar space.

I repeated this process in Enkidu, for baritone saxophone and live electronics. I have also been commissioned to write a piece for bassoon, and one for alto saxophone; recordings will be released soon.

I have a growing number of compositions that I perform using an apparatus of synthesizers, MIDI controllers, and computers.  Many of these songs are short, loud, experimental, and written to be performed at underground venues.

Baltimore has a scene for people who crave new, interesting music.  I've performed my solo work at Reverb, Bloom Bars, and a number of venues around the country.  These works explore freedom of form, timbral variety, and lyricism in a way that's neither classical nor pop.