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. I have composed about an hour's worth of music for the Civitasolis Quintet, and, thanks to an MSAC grant, we plan to record the music to an album by fall 2024.

Heroes and Villains, one of the pieces to be recorded, is a mixed bag of five movements that encapsulate archetypal emotions relevant to today's zeitgeist. "Heroes and Villains” (infighting), "Dark Money” (corruption), "Jeering Song” (lip service), "Patty Cake” (deceit) and finally, “Elegy” (death) are the stories one sees every day on the news. Overall, the piece has a dark, satirical tone, unpredictably shifting musically between play, ridicule, and rage. Though often dissonant and challenging, the themes derive from an eclectic array of catchy folk-like melodies (along the lines of Charles Ives) that make the music accessible to listeners of many backgrounds. The Civitasolis Quintet has premiered Heroes and Villains in Baltimore at the Hargrove. Since then they've also performed it at ClarinetFest in Denver, and will perform it at USC later this year. 

A second half hour piece will appear on the album called Music for Weddings, meant to contrast with emotionally with the wryness of Heroes and Villains. This rapturous, majestic work embraces vulnerability in a way that’s also sophisticated and ornate. It stacks long sequences of harmonies, incorporates quarter tones into the melodies, and uses dizzyingly ecstatic gestures.  

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. The imagery in Psalm 23 - Da Ha iss mei Schopfhieder reminds me of rural Pennsylvania and is heavily influenced by American religious folk music. The rustic Matthew 5:38 - Liewe eier Feinda encapsulates a core Amish believe: love your enemy. Its harsh minor key sounds more like a hybrid of baroque music and Swiss folk music from the time the Amish immigrated to America. 

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.

In 2023, Psalm 23 was performed in Minnesota at the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers. I am currently setting a text from Ecclesiastes 1. 

I'm hoping will one day become a concert length religious choral work, though funding this project will be a challenge. However, I find pursuing the project worthwhile. The tenets of Amish culture, such as the belief in forgiveness and non-violence, could heal America of its polarization. Pennsylvania Dutch is spoken by 300,000 Amish and non-Amish people and differs greatly from German in grammar and lexicon. Its ornate words beget emotions with more heart than Latin or English, the preferred languages of American religious music. and few pieces have been set in Pennsylvania Dutch in the 21st century. The Amish originally settled in Pennsylvania and the midwest, but Amish diaspora now stretches across the country.

Teacher Tales bears witness to America's struggling education systems. "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.

As a teacher, I authored the lyrics to these songs. Unlike many "social justice pieces," this work wasn't written in an ivory tower; it's a direct product of someone who has toiled, lost sleep, and suffered anxiety from working the front lines. I don't know everything about society, but I think our schools are a microcosm of society at large. Stories of how the system is failing our children demonstrates the general decline of American society.

"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.

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.