A serious question (not hypothetical): Name a professional enterprise outside the creative arts where the idea of developing a solid, versatile technique is met with open disdain from some of its practitioners?  A profession where the desire to cultivate a progressive set of skills enhanced through g...

The avenues of social media where new music reside have been afire the past 24 hours with the sudden notice of a speech given by the composer Kevin Volans (I say "sudden" because it's dated mid-June of this year). Volans speaks to issues that, to me, are at the heart of the creative endeavor: notions...

Summer means I've found time to give this site a much-needed update.  So, here-we-go:

• The most notable update is this BLOG!

On this new page of the site, I'll be posting information regarding new works, performances, as well as the occasional essay and (beg pardon) rant.  I've struggled with the...

A mentor once told me that the only thing that separates the waning childhood of high school seniorism and the latent adulthood of college freshmanism was “one single, crazy summer”. For me personally, the soundtrack to that crazy summer, and the following year away from home, was the Beach Boys’ Pet...

Ubi Caritas was recently broadcast on Baltimore Radio WYPR "Choral Arts Classics"

Listen to the broadcast here.   For more information on the piece, click here.



I recently composed incidental music for SUNY Fredonia's Mainstage production of Pirandello's 
Six Characters in Search of an Author (my...

(above:  Boulez: "Improvisation III sur Mallarmé" (original unpublished version, 1959) - opening.
Courtesy Phyllis Bryn-Julson Collection, Peabody Archives)

I awoke this morning and, as always, reached for my phone to read news headlines and check emails. Among both were transmissions of sad but not a...

The following is a sort-of "preview" of a lecture I gaveon the School of Music Research Colloquium series at SUNY Fredonia on 4 December 2013.

My first definitive exposure to Britten’s music was in Middle School, when my mother, who directed a community choir, put together a performance of the SATB ve...