Melodic Short Piece | solo flute (1991)

This was the first piece I wrote down & gave to someone else to play. My titles needed a little help back then. Luckily my parents brought me to title counseling.


Sonata for Violin & Piano (1993)

This was the last piece I began before starting composition lessons with Frances Thompson McKay at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC & the first piece I ever performed & recorded with another musician. I wrote it in 1993, when I was just starting to buy CD's. The influences of the first 3 CD's I bought are readily apparent in this little sonata: Antal Dorati's recording of the Rite of Spring with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (the first movement), Copland's Third Symphony (the third movement) & a disc of orchestral works by Virgil Thomson (the second movement). Stephanie Matthews (violin) & I recorded it at Levine, the start of a fruitful partnership! See Stephanie's recording of my Sonatine for violin & piano below.

There are 3 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano (1995)

In 1995 I received a commission to compose a chamber piece to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my music school, the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC. The premiere was to be at a reception hosted by Vice President Gore, but when Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown was killed in a plane crash just a few days before the event in April 1996, the reception & concert were cancelled.

I remember hearing Martinů's Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano (1944) on the radio one evening just as I was thinking about what I might write for this instrumentation, which was imposed by the commission. I loved the piece instantly & used it as my inspiration, which I think is quite audible. There are three movements but only two have ever been performed. I called the first movement a Barcarolle although now I'm not sure that it's a terribly fitting title. The second movement I imagined as a kind of love duet between the flute & cello, with piano commentary. The last movement (not included here) is a rollicking allegro.

There are 2 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Eight Chagalls | flute, clarinet, violin, cello, harp & piano (1996)

I wrote this piece at age 15 as a birthday present for Paul Bowles, who was one of my early mentors. Each movement is based on a different painting by Marc Chagall. The movement titles are those of the paintings they represent. The piece was first performed at Williams College in 1997 at the awards concert for the BMG National Young Composers Awards. Eight Chagalls shared the Grand Prize in the high school category of this award. Later in the year the work was also awarded a BMI Student Composer Award.

There are 8 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Cézanne | tenor & string orchestra (1997)

This is a setting of Gertrude Stein's "portrait" of Cézanne for tenor & string orchestra I wrote in 1997. I was a devotee of Virgil Thomson's manual on text setting Music with Words & both the prosody & the musical style owe a lot to old Virgil. Cézanne was first performed in 1998 by the Centreville High School Chamber Orchestra directed by Cheryl Cooley with Douglas Bowles as the tenor soloist.

The Irish lady can say, that to-day is every day. Caesar can say that every day is to-day and they say that every day is as they say.
In this way we have a place to stay and he was not met because he was settled to stay. When I said settled I meant settled to stay. When I said settled to stay I meant settled to stay Saturday. In this way a mouth is a mouth. In this way if in as a mouth if in as a mouth where, if in as a mouth where and there. Believe they have water too. Believe they have that water too and blue when you see blue, is all blue precious too, is all that that is precious too is all that and they meant to absolve you. In this way Cézanne nearly did nearly in this way. Cézanne nearly did nearly did and nearly did. And was I surprised. Was I very surprised. Was I surprised. I was surprised and in that patient, are you patient when you find bees. Bees in a garden make a specialty of honey and so does honey. Honey and prayer. Honey and there. There where the grass can grow nearly four times yearly.



Sonatine | violin & piano (1997)

This is a work for violin & piano that I wrote when I was 16, when I was studying with composer Frances Thompson McKay at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC. It's pretty obvious that I was obsessed with the Stravinsky violin concerto at the time. There's also a lot of influence from Milhaud. The work was only performed once, at my senior recital at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill in 1998, the same year it won an ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composers Award. This is the recording of that performance, given by Stephanie Matthews (violin) & Jeffrey Chappell (piano).

There are 5 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Sonatine | flute & piano (1997)

This was the piece that Paul Bowles liked the best of my early stuff. Perhaps that's because it sounds very much like his own music. I think he liked the straightforward approach to form & the unabashed tunefulness. Listening to it now I find myself surprised at the wistfulness of the music. I recorded it with the flutist for whom it was written, Jessica Barry, in 1998.

There are 3 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Sonatine | clarinet & piano (1997)

Another sonatine, this one for clarinet & piano. I don't remember too much about its composition except I was experimenting with two-movement forms instead of the usual three movements.

There are 2 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Sonatine | viola & piano (1997)

I share a birthday with the composer Paul Hindemith, whose music I never particularly liked. Nevertheless, I thought I would try to write a piece in his style (& for his instrument!). So this is it. To make it even more Hindemithian I wrote it in an airplane going I no longer remember where. I'm not sure if it will sound like Hindemith to anyone else but I always thought that whenever I composed away from the piano my music tended to turn out like his. This piece, like the Clarinet Sonatine, has only two movements. Violist Naimah Bilal & I premiered it in 1998.

There are 2 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


Sonatine | piano four hands (1998)

This is a short piece for piano four hands that I wrote about 1998. There's a very strong echo of Poulenc's early four hand sonata. There's also a funny little parody of the opening of the Grieg piano concerto. My piano teacher, the extraordinary pianist Jeffrey Chappell, & I gave the first (& only) performance in 1998.


Suite for Flute & Piano (1998)

I wrote this little suite in 1998 to fill out the program of my senior composition recital. Like many of the pieces on that recital, the influence of composers like Poulenc & Milhaud is very apparent. I gave the premiere with Melissa Ngan playing the flute part.

There are 5 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.


A Sonnet from the Portuguese | soprano & piano (1999)

This is a setting of the 22nd sonnet of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. A note I found affixed to the cassette tape of this recording explains that, apparently, the soprano who was supposed to record this song with me got sick, so I had to sing it while accompanying myself at the piano. I promise this is the only time you'll ever hear me sing on this site! I'm uploading this recording in an effort to work on my humility (a never-ending project.)

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented?  Think!  In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence.  Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.



Angry Candy | flute, viola & harp (1999)

This was my attempt to write rough-edged music for the indomitably elegant & graceful ensemble of flute, viola & harp. The title comes from the end of an e.e. cummings poem, the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls:

. . . . the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy



Et super nivem dealbabor | cello & piano (1999)

This is a piece I composed as an undergraduate at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. The style reflects the composers I was listening to at the time, namely Ligeti & Schnittke. The title (trans.: "And I shall be whiter than snow...") comes from the Asperges Me antiphon. I chose it because the piece sounded to me like a kind of ritual of purification. Eliza Jacques Meyer (cello) & Winston Choi (piano) gave the first performance at IU.


Even in Arcady | string quartet (1999)

On a trip to Scotland in 1999 I visited the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel, a 15th century church belonging to the Sinclair family. I was fascinated by the stories I heard about this place: that what looked like ears of American corn carved into some of the windows was proof that the Sinclairs had made it to the New World half a century before Columbus; that the Knights Templar came to Roslin to plot their resurgence 150 years after the suppression of the Order, bringing with them many treasures, including the Holy Grail; that the chapel itself was incomplete & only represented the sanctuary of a much larger edifice planned by the Templars, no less than the reconstruction of Solomon's Temple, ruined when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem in 587 BC. These claims (& many more) were explored in a 1982 book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln. I bought this book in the chapel bookstore & read it with great interest. In 2003 the major hypothesis presented in The Holy Blood -- that Jesus fathered children with Mary Magdalen & was buried in a secret tomb after dying of natural causes -- was incorporated into Dan Brown's bestseller The Davinci Code. I think Rosslyn Chapel also figures in Brown's novel but I'm not sure because I never read it.

I wrote my string quartet shortly after returning from Scotland & the strange discoveries I made there. The title of the work makes reference to the mid-17th century painting by Nicolas Poussin Et in Arcadia ego that "alternative historians" claim holds a clue to the location of the tomb of Jesus. Rather than being just a memento mori in which Death assures us that "even in Arcadia [that is, any lovely, idyllic earthly place], I am there," the "Holy Blood" true believers claim that the title is actually an anagram indicating that Poussin was somehow in possession of knowledge of Jesus's tomb.

So what did I think I was doing using all this stuff as a point of departure for my piece? Well, I can say that I was fascinated by the lengths to which people will go to find (or fabricate) answers to the basic questions of human existence: who we are, where we come from, where we go when we die. I wanted to convey this searching quality in the music. To that end, I composed a first movement characterized by elemental opening material (open fifths) that is constantly destabilized by microtonal incursions. The second movement reaches back into the 15th century -- the time of the construction of Rosslyn Chapel -- to deconstruct & rebuild a period carol to increasingly perverse effect. The title of the last movement conveys most plainly the searching nature I hoped capture in the music. Quem quaeritis? ("Whom do you seek?") is another Latin phrase that has been the basis of more than a few paintings over the centuries. It is the question the angels ask of the "three Marys" in the medieval Easter liturgical drama when they visited the empty tomb of Jesus after the Resurrection. The music is constructed with a series of insistent, questioning repeated notes passed around the ensemble while clouds of uncertain harmonies well up & dissolve underneath. I think it's quite obvious that I was listening to & studying the string quartets of Alfred Schnittke, which the Kronos Quartet had just released, when I wrote this piece in 1999.

There are 3 movements -- use the FFW & RW arrows on the media player to scroll through the tracks.



(More early works coming soon...)