On Distant Shores
Written for the Rioult Dance Company, the 2nd movement incorporates Air, originally for Cello and piano.
String Quartet No. 2 “Six Faces”
Like the movements of my first string quartet, “Ars Mathematica,” the six movements of this work are inspired in part by paintings. The six paintings are Georges Braque’s "Girl with [...]
Second Ballad
Commissioned by Stephanie Key for David Mollenaur's 50th Birthday.
Spectra
This duet explores the spectrum of colors found in the harmonic series. Melodies are entirely constructed from this collection of pitches and take advantage of the cello and natural horn's [...]
Never Found Again
'Never Found Again' takes its title from a quote by Benjamin Franklin "Lost time is never found again". The piece is for solo cello and drone. The drone part can [...]
Hush
"Hush maps the concept of speech and song onto a duo for percussion and cello. Taking excerpts from Virginia Woolf's short story "The String Quartet," the performers convey the busy-ness [...]
In Bad Faith
I wrote In Bad Faith for the St. Petersburg String Quartet while they were in residence at the University of Michigan in December of 2004. The title has several dimensions [...]
Thy Wondering Eyes
Thy Wondering Eyes takes the singing tradition of the Old Regular Baptists of central Appalachia as a point of departure. Old Regular hymnals contain words only, and so the tunes [...]
Sons Decoupes
The title is an echo of "gouaches decoupees," the cut-out technique invented and perfected by Henri Matisse – this work was premiered at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA, and [...]
Dunn Songs
Two settings of poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn.
Paean, Epitaph, and Dithyramb
Three movements excerpted from Ode (2008): each references a lyric poetic form of Ancient Greece. The first is slow and tuneful, the second a solo flute soliloquy, the third fiery.