Commissioned by the Oxidize Quartet for their album titled “White Hot Sound”

Written for and commissioned by Kate Duncan and Spencer Poston

Premiere Apr 30, 2016 at Colorado State University

In the Fall of 2015 I wrote a solo piano piece for Sarah Cahill titled “track”. That work was inspired by this quote often credited to Henry David Thoreau: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

When granted the opportunity to write a work for Adam Cockerham this text still lingered in my mind. I have since discovered that my book had misattributed the text to Thoreau when in fact it was written by Wilfred Arlan Peterson who was rehashing a concept he claims to have gotten from Thoreau’s “Walden”. While this new theorbo work shares some features of the piano piece written for Sarah Cahill, it may be more appropriate to do my own paraphrase of Luciano Berio. “The completed work is the ritual and commentary of other works preceding it, of more works that will follow. The question does not provoke a response but rather commentary and new questions”.

Written for and commissioned by Emelie Pfaff and Lara Mitofsky Neuss

Premiere Feb 28, 2016 at Colorado State University

Recording Coming Soon

“We Resist the Brightness” ii written for haegeum + viola was written for Soo-yeon Lyuh and Ellen Ruth Rose

Recording Coming Soon

In E. L. Doctorow’s novel “Homer and Langley”, based on Manhattan’s notorious Fifth Avenue compulsively hoarding Collyer brothers, Doctorow first introduces his character Homer as he is losing his sight. Homer is keen to notice the gradual fade out. Individual details are lost, then whole images are distorted, and finally he is completely blind. In the darkness he can hear a sound made by an ice skater that was always present but never noticed: “a soft sound though full of intention, a deeper tone than you’d expect made by the skate blades, perhaps for having sounded the resonant basso under the ice, scoot scut, scoot scut.”

Approximate Duration: 9 minutes

Score and Recording for Two Bass Clarinets Coming Soon

Recording of Bassoon and Bass Clarinet

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