Below you will find program notes for all of my pieces, in alphabetical order. For organization by genre, please refer to the music page.

Aggressor

This piece originally began as a trombone quartet, written around 2002. It is named Aggressor in response to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and rumored invasion of Iraq at the time. The materials of the piece conjured up images of the desert and the military in my mind, but it is up to the listener to decide which party is the aggressor. In 2006 I decided to arrange some of my early, less mature pieces for young bands, and that is the version you will find here.

Behind the 8-Ball
      Premiere: Atlanta, 12/2/2005

This work is written for any number of improvisers on any number of instruments (including voice and other body sounds). The piece will also require a prompter who will obtain prophesies from the Magic 8-ball and relay these prophesies to the performers and the audience.

The work is based not only on the Magic 8-Ball toy from Tyco Toys, Inc., but also on notions of semiotics in music explored by William Coker in his book Music and Meaning: A Theoretical Introduction to Musical Aesthetics. (NY: The Free Press, 1972.) Among his ideas is the notion of musical "truth," in which an expression is presented, disputed, then reaffirmed in a piece of music. The simplest example would be ABA form, but this notion could be applied to any music in which opening material is presented again (even in a transformation) to conclude, or "prove" a piece.

Behind the 8-Ball also owes an enormous debt to John Zorn and his game pieces. I was already a fan of Zorn's work with Naked City when I first performed Cobra, but Cobra has since come to be one of my favorite works by anyone.

In this work, the improvisers will present an expression, which the 8-Ball toy will deem satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or somewhere in between. Based on the toy's responses, the improvisers will play either similar or different material. The piece concludes with an affirmation of their original improvisations.

Deviations
      Premiere: New York New Music Ensemble, June in Buffalo Festival, Buffalo, NY, 6/7/2006

Deviations is a set of brief variations (or deviations) on the clarinet's thematic material in the opening section. The second section is loosely based on Hindustani rhythms and treats the theme vertically rather than horizontally. In the third section, the theme is again treated horizontally, becoming more and more fragmented as it moves from one instrument to another. The fourth section features a drone in the piano over which the clarinet, violin, and cello weave through variants of the theme. The final variation, marked largo, explores the general downward gesture of the theme, rather than particular pitches or rhythms. The soft codetta again returns the theme to its original pitch-classes and the vertical nature of the first variation. This work was premiered by the New York New Music Ensemble at the 2006 June in Buffalo festival.

Djinn
      Premiere: Atlanta, GA, 12/8/2006

A Djinn, or genie, is a spiritual being closely associated with Islam and the Middle East. Not always confined to lamps, djinn can be benevolent or malevolent. In fact, one type of djinn in pre-Islamic times was the ghul, from which we derive the word "ghoul." This is probably the type of djinn we meet in this piece. A cold desert night, we hear his serpentine temptations, which may lead us to riches or ruin. All of the source material for the tape part comes from the trombone, manipulated in various ways, and the trombone's material is based upon the pitch collection played by the tape at the very end. From there, I created a theme from which the rest of the trombone's material is developed.

Etchings in the Silence
      Requested by Daniel Swilley
      Premiere: Atlanta, GA, 12/2/2005

I wrote this piece for my colleague, composer and trumpeter Daniel Swilley. With this work I attempted to write a trumpet solo that would go far against the grain of most trumpet solos. I wanted to explore negative space, and soft dynamics. I wanted to explore extended resources of the instrument. Most of all, I wanted to surprise and amuse the player and the audience.

Five Movements on Mondrian
      Premiere: Atlanta, 12/8/2006

In this work, I made careful approximations of five of Piet Mondrian's paintings on graph paper and used the dimensions of these graphs to determine rhythms and forms. The work was made almost entirely in Csound, with some extra editing and reverberation in Sound Forge. To emulate Mondrian's primary-color world, I used a limited palette of sounds: percussive hits (bass drum, tom, snare, music stand, iron rail), white noise, the buzz and pluck opcodes, and granular synthesis clouds made from the words "blue," "red," and "yellow," spoken by myself.

More Money Than You Know What To Do With
      Premiere: Belfast, 4/10/08

More Money Than You Know What to Do With is a piece for my interactive controller "Tuppence-a-board." A button on the board takes the player through different modules in a Max/MSP patch, which process in various ways the sounds of coins which the player spins and scrapes on top of the board.

November Night

November Night is a brief work scored for SATB chorus. It is based upon a poem of the same name by Adelaide Crapsey, inventor of the Cinquain poetic form later made popular by Carl Sandburg.

November Night

    Listen
    With faint dry sound
    Like steps of passing ghosts
    The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break
    And fall

Nympholepsy
      Premiere: neoPhonia New Music Ensemble, Atlanta, GA, 2/15/2005

In mythology, Nympholepsy meant a state of frenzy afflicting any man who looked at a nymph, but now it has come to mean a state of frenzy afflicting anyone who holds a desire for an unattainable ideal. In this piece, the solo flute represents both the nymph (or ideal) and the frenzy (or pursuit of the ideal). The musical gestures sweep up, only to be grounded again, and the ideal comes so close we can almost grasp it, only to fly away before we can.

Obedience School

The structure and most of the sounds in Obedience School are derived from a 14.5-second recording of a dog. The onsets of different sounds, such as a bark, a breath, or a footstep, determined the beginnings of formal divisions. The length of each section was multiplied by 40 to create the finished form, with a length of 9:40. Each section of the work focuses on a particular process with the original sound, although the other processes often interrupt or emerge from beneath the main sound. The processes were ordered in such a way to reflect the sounds from the original sample, but the correlation is not exact. For example, the metric attacks of the first section reflect the dog’s pseudo-metric footsteps, and the brassage-seagulls reflect his soft whimpering.

Parallel Lives
      Premiere: Belfast, 2/29/08

Parallel Lives is a collaboration between video artist Kevin Dotson and myself. The video was captured in Atlanta and Tallulah Gorge State Park in Georgia. The first section of the work presents various parallel lines and grids used in urban settings, while the second half shows the curves, ebbs, and flows of nature. The music likewise reflects a dichotomy - the first section features a hard-edged and almost purely synthesised music and the second sections features a more etherial music based upon samples of instruments and voices.

Petrichor
      Premiere: Atlanta, 10/09/07

Petrichor is a term coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas that describes the pleasant fragrance of rain. The fragrance is actually a combination of various chemical compounds collected on rocks and soil, so the term combines the Greek words "petros" (stone) and "ichor" (the blood of the gods in Greek mythology). This piece depicts a rainy summer afternoon, beginning with a thunderstorm and followed by a more subdued rainshower.

Petrichor - Installation Version
      Premiere: Belfast, 1/17/08

Petrichor is a term coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas that describes the pleasant fragrance of rain. The fragrance is actually a combination of various chemical compounds collected on rocks and soil, so the term combines the Greek words "petros" (stone) and "ichor" (the blood of the gods in Greek mythology). This installation is a second version of my 7-minute work Petrichor for clarinet and tape. Using the sounds from that work as well as "leftovers" from the composition process, I created this extended installation version. There is about 100 minutes of unique material, which may be presented via Max/MSP patch or via two CD players on random shuffle. Thus, there will be a continually changing and evolving soundscape that is similar in tone to the original, but much more relaxed and introspective in pace.

This version may be presented in stereo, but is perhaps more appropriate in a quadraphonic context. It may also be presented in conjunction with a small group of improvisers reacting to and supplementing the texture. If you are interested in presenting this work, please contact me and I will send you the necessary materials.

Prelude and Rondo

Prelude and Rondo for string trio began life as the last two movements of a larger string trio, written in 2005. In 2008, I split the piece apart, with these movements remaining together and the first movement becoming the basis of a work for violin and piano. This piece consists of a prelude, largo misterioso, and a piece in rondo form, allegro risoluto, played attaca.

Promenade de minuit

Promenade de minuit is intended to evoke a dream-like walk under the moonlight. Unlike much of my work, this was written intuitively, without any strict form or pitch scheme. The piece was written for Turdus Merula

Redwoods

Redwoods is from a group of early pieces I have rearranged for young wind bands. Originally, this piece was a music theory project on impressionism, which later became a duet for piano and electric bass guitar. This piece depicts the grandeur and mystery of the mighty redwood forests on the Pacific coast.

The Shadow and the Mask

The title of The Shadow and the Mask is inspired by the work of Carl Jung. In short, the shadow is all of our repressed feelings, in stark opposition to the face, or mask, that we present to the world. The violin and piano do not represent the shadow and the mask respectively. Since neither the shadow or the mask are entirely positive or negative, I was interested in depicting how both reach to the lighter and darker aspects of our complete selves.

...the silver-plumed reeds tremble

This piece is derived from the second movement of a larger work titled "Three Haiku," which is scored for flute, guitar, viola, and percussion. The instrumentation was chosen to evoke an Eastern atmosphere, using gongs and finger cymbals, drums, a stone, and a shaker. This solo strips away the counterpoint of the original piece to reveal the percussion's timbral evolutions. The instrumentation was decidedly limited, and this evolution is articulated largely by choice of beater. Neither this nor the original piece are strictly programmatic, but the movements were titled after poems that served as inspiration. The poems were written by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Although the material for this work is derived from the second movement, the title is taken from the first:

    "at the full moon's
    rising, the silver-plumed
    reeds tremble"

The Sonic Generator
      Premiere: Belfast, 1/17/08

The Sonic Generator was part of my comprehensive examination for my master's degree at Georgia State University. The task was to write an algorithm which would create one minute of music out of one second of sound. There were several caveats stipulating synthesis methods to be used and the direction of material elaboration. The result was a DOS batch file controlling several Csound orchestras, with scores created by Mikel Kuehn's "nGen" program. Each time the program is run, it follows the same musical form, but nGen creates different rhythms and pitches. These new rhythms and pitches, combined with unique timbres in every pass, create slightly different surfaces to the same piece.

In concert, up to five examples of this program may be played. The presenter may use my examples, but it is preferable that he run the program using his own samples. This piece was named in honor of the contemporary music ensemble at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Straphanger
      Premiere: Atlanta, GA, 2/2/2007

Straphanger is based entirely upon the sounds of Atlanta's MARTA rail system. The title is a slang term for a subway commuter, and the piece depicts a musical daydream, beginning with clear samples of the subway before drifting elsewhere. Once the car's doors close, the mind begins to wander through metallic scrapings sounds, ethereal bubbling clouds, and dissonant voices before being jolted awake by the clattering sounds of the tracks. Soon the mind wanders again and the tracks become explosions and the explosions become distant organ arpeggios. This piece makes extensive use of granular synthesis, and algorithmic generation, subtractive synthesis, and time-stretching.

Straphanger - Installation Version
      Premiere: Belfast, 1/17/08


Straphanger is based entirely upon the sounds of Atlanta's MARTA rail system. The title is a slang term for a subway commuter, and the piece depicts a musical daydream, beginning with clear samples of the subway before drifting elsewhere. Once the car's doors close, the mind begins to wander through metallic scrapings sounds, ethereal bubbling clouds, and dissonant voices before being jolted awake by the clattering sounds of the tracks. Soon the mind wanders again and the tracks become explosions and the explosions become distant organ arpeggios. This piece makes extensive use of granular synthesis, and algorithmic generation, subtractive synthesis, and time-stretching.

This is a second version of my 6-minute work Straphanger. Using the sounds from that work as well as "leftovers" from the composition process, I created this extended installation version. There is about 100 minutes of unique material, which may be presented via Max/MSP patch or via two CD players on random shuffle. Thus, there will be a continually changing and evolving soundscape that is similar in tone to the original, but much more relaxed and introspective in pace.

This version may be presented in stereo, but is perhaps more appropriate in a quadraphonic context. It may also be presented in conjunction with a small group of improvisers reacting to and supplementing the texture. If you are interested in presenting this work, please contact me and I will send you the necessary materials.

Tanka

Tanka is similar to my earlier work Three Haiku in that it uses a Japanese poetic form to determine structure. The English form of tanka typically has 31 syllables distributed over five lines in the pattern 5-7-5-7-7. The final two lines are often considered the "turn" (similar to that in a sonnet), where the subject matter or mood changes the meaning of the preceding lines. In this piece, the cello's melodic material projects 31 sonorities, divided into five large sections. The first three sections feature disjunct and declamatory gestures, while the final two sections (after the "turn") feature more continuous and running gestures.

Three Haiku
      Premiere: Lithonia, GA, 9/23/2006

Three Haiku originally began as a project called "Instant Music," in which I drew the names of performers out of a hat and had to write a five-minute work for their instrumentation, all within 24 hours. The original instrumentation was trumpet, non-pitched percussion, vibraphone, and guitar, which brought to my mind the image of an Asian garden. In keeping with the Asian theme, I used the poetic form of haiku to serve as an outline for the work: three larger sections, with five subsections in the first and third parts and seven subsections in the middle. The result pleased me very much, and is largely intact here as the first movement. I later contacted Beacon Dance about a collaboration, and I began writing two movements to accompany the first. During the writing of this piece, the instrumentation changed several times to the present state, where I chose instruments that had counterparts in Chinese and Japanese music. The poems that accompany the movements were written by haiku master Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902).

    "at the full moon's
    rising, the silver-plumed
    reeds tremble"

    "the moon is cool -
    "frog's croaking
    wells up"

    "coolness -
    a mountain stream splashes out
    between houses"

Through the Canopy
      Premiere: Atlanta, 12/8/2006

Through the Canopy for amplified solo piano attempts to depict the shimmering spots of light that shine through the canopy of a forest. As the wind blows, the spots move, change shape, and dissipate. This work is based upon a sonority that is revealed in full only at the beginning and the end of the work; in the remainder of the piece the sonority is revealed only as moving, changing, and shimmering spots of light.

Travels
      Premiere: Atlanta, GA, 4/28/2006

Travels is a set of short pieces based on five poems by Stephen Crane. "The Universe," "The Wayfarer," and "The Prophet" appear in War is Kind & Other Lines (1899), and "The Desert" and "The Horizon" appear in Black Riders & Other Lines (1905). It is also an homage of sorts to Circles by Luciano Berio, and Ancient Voices of Children by George Crumb, both of which feature similar instrumentation.

The Universe
    A man said to the universe:
    "Sir, I exist!"
    "However," replied the universe,
    "The fact has not created in me
    A sense of obligation."

The Desert
    In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
    who, squatting upon the ground,
    Held his heart in his hands,
    And ate of it.
    I said, "Is it good, friend?"
    "It is bitter -- bitter," he answered;
    "But I like it
    Because it is bitter,
    And because it is my heart."

The Wayfarer
    The wayfarer,
    Perceiving the pathway to truth,
    Was struck with astonishment.
    It was thickly overgrown with weeds.
    "Ha," he said,
    "I see that none has passed here
    In a long time."
    Later he saw that each weed
    Was a singular knife.
    "Well," he mumbled at last,
    "Doubtless there are other roads."

The Prophet
    When the prophet, a complacent fat man,
    Arrived at the mountain-top,
    He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!
    I intended to see good white lands
    And bad black lands,
    But the scene is grey."

The Horizon
    I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
    Round and round they sped.
    I was disturbed at this;
    I accosted the man.
    "It is futile," I said,
    "You can never--"
    "You lie," he cried,
    And ran on.

Yahtzee

This work is written for any number of improvisers on any number of instruments (including voice and other body sounds). The piece will also require a prompter who will obtain directions from a set of dice and relay these directions to the performers.

The work follows a similar piece of mine, Behind the 8-Ball, which uses Tyco's Magic 8-ball toy to provide direction for improvisors.