July 2023 News
In February, my new song cycle Felling, with lyrics by Kendra Preston Leonard was premiered by Daniel Laverriere and pianist Brendon Shapiro as part of FUSE: Collaborations in Song, a project of Catalyst New Music and Boston Singers' Resource at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. The 10-minute cycle describes the journey from untouched forest to destruction to regeneration.
I recently finished up a commission, Three Sephardic Songs, for the contemporary chamber ensemble fivebyfive (based in Rochester, NY and with whom I interned a few years ago) and their unique lineup of flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, and double bass. They'll be premiering the piece in October in Rochester.
In April, my new organ work Kaleidoscope, composed as part of the Composing the Future project between the Eastman School of Music and the University of Siegen in Germany, was given a tremendous premiere by organist Alex Little on the historical Hildebrandt organ (built in 1743 and performed on by J.S. Bach himself!) in Naumburg, Germany. Alex will play the piece again in Rochester, NY in September.
And here is the recording as a score-following video in case you prefer to follow the score:
In April and May, the pianist (and my good friend from college) Kirsten Homdrom performed my Prelude No. 14 (Berceuse) on her tour of Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio. I was glad I was able to make it to one of her performances where I was just one of a wide variety of different composers represented across different time periods, countries, races, and genders. She did a fantastic job on all of the pieces, including mine, and it was great to catch up with her.
Last summer, I composed a work that is quite a bit different from most of my previous music, but represents a path that I am really interested in exploring more. This piece, which I call Inexorable, consists of seven independent voices, each in their own octave, which play only the seven pitches of the C diatonic scale (the “white notes” of the piano). For the first 210 measures of the piece, the music proceeds through all 5040 possible permutations of these seven notes in seven octaves, changing to a new permutation every 16th-note. In other words, the music is always the same (we always hear all seven diatonic pitches at the same time) but always different (never repeating the same voicing of those seven pitches) until we have heard these pitches in “all ways.” The result is a meditative and atmospheric work where things are always very gradually shifting and changing. For a variety of reasons, I realized that this idea doesn't fit very well for live performers, so instead I wrote it for a mechanical piano. This recording I made actually uses computerized harpsichord sounds. Have listen and let me know what you think!
Finally, my family and I will be moving back to New England next month as I accepted a job as Director of Music at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Brattleboro, Vermont! St. Michael's is a really wonderful church and community committed to social justice work, including racial, economic, and environmental (they are currently installing solar panels on the roof!) I'll be playing the organ, directing the choir of 20+ singers, and creating a new reincarnation of the church's "Choir School" which I am hoping to redesign using ideas from my research on El Sistema and Kingian Nonviolence. I'll still be teaching composition online and trying to grow my list of students, and of course will be spending a lot of time composing as well. For those of you who know me well, you know that I love Vermont and New England, so I'm really excited to be returning after some years away.