Full Circles
This piece is dedicated to Polish musicians Barbara Łypik Sobaniec and Tomasz Sobaniec, who will premiere it in June 2024 in Switzerland. This often quite humorous piece contrasts the sustaining [...]
Five Fjords
These lovely and odd poems were a pleasure to set! They should be performed quite irreverently, in the audience’s face so to speak, though exactly.
Denkmal einer Stunde
This was a work commissioned for a project in Constance Germany for a festival of concerts having to do with paradise. Many passages have an intensive use of whole-tone scales [...]
A Melancholy Break
Oddly enough, the first version of this piece was for alphorn and piano. I subsequently prepared a version for trumpet and piano, and then a version for violin and piano, [...]
Stolen Goods
I wrote Stolen Goods for a competition in which it was stipulated that the piece should have some connection to Beethoven. I had a great deal of fun finding motives [...]
Dante’s Dream
In the mid 2000s I prepared a choral piece using a fragment from Dante’s Divine Comedy. It turned out to be too difficult for the group I had written it [...]
Wind Up & Unravel
This is a piece with several discrete episodes that are sometimes separated by a break, and sometimes merge with each other. It would be a fun and challenging piece for [...]
Aurora Empor
This piece was commissioned, recorded and performed numerous times by Switzerland’s premier pan flutist Urban Frey. It also works well with the transverse flute. From the CD booklet notes: “During [...]
Aus den Schatten
This short piece is a good companion for Beethoven’s Gassenhauer Trio. It was premiered by the Avalon Trio in Switzerland.
Orientalism
Orientalism derives its name from the eponymous book by the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said. My interest in orientalism started with the constant disparity I felt between my experience of being [...]
Princesa de Hadas (Fairy Tale Princess)
Princesa de hadas (Fairy Tale Princess) was commissioned by Argentine poet Patricio Méndez. The title of this piece refers to a verse from a poem by Méndez, where he describes [...]
Danzas Latinoamericanas (Latin American Dances)
Danzas Latinoamericanas (Latin American Dances) is a 10-minute suite in three movements. Its movements can be performed independently. It was originally commissioned by Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto. It is based [...]
Escher Triptych
M.C. Escher is known for his mind-bending prints that frequently created impossible geometry or meshed perspectives in unexpected ways. I remember learning about tessellations in a middle school math class [...]
Second Ballad
Commissioned by Stephanie Key for David Mollenaur's 50th Birthday.
Meditation (in Memory of John Lennon)
Written shortly after John Lennon's death.