Sweet Creature (2006)

When presented with the opportunity to compose a work for the bodhran, naturally, I had to consider its specific attributes. Since the instrument at my disposal were not specifically pitched — only relatively, high to low —, rhythm emerged as a primary concern. For ideas, I decided to return the music of Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-77), whose complex rhythmic polyphony has always been an inspiration. The radical music of Machaut was fiercely criticized by members of the church, not unlike certain recent artworks that have been condemned by today's conservative factions.

So, in technical and political solidarity with my fourteenth-century forebears, I adopted their technique of isorhythm, long rhythmic patterns that are layered upon one another. Using this compositional method, I devised a system of rhythmic organization that underlies the structure of my piece. The title of the work is taken from "douce creature," a turn of phrase that Machaut used in some of his love poems that he later set to music.

While the elegance of Machaut's courtly art may at first seem difficult to reconcile with the rustic assertiveness of an Irish hand drum, I find that this intersection of cultures and eras is appropriately contemporary without disrespecting the heritages from which I have drawn.

Rendition (2006)

Trespass (2005)

I have always been interested in boundaries, how they are created, and what happens when they are transgressed. While remaining within these divisions produces a more reliable and predictable experience, it is only by crossing them that one gains the hindsight of where one has been and the knowledge of what lies beyond them. On the other hand, the forceful occupation that results from breaching these boundaries may have a different destabilizing effect, one that throws established norms into uncertain, sometimes violent flux.

My composition for piano and chamber ensemble establishes formal boundaries between thirteen telescoping sections, each slightly more than half the length of its immediate predecessor. The opening, longer sections contain several contrasting subsections that are united by the necessary relief that they provide through internal proportional and tensional balance. As the later sections are radically diminished in length, their contents — some of which have been displaced from previous sections — become more homogenous and the juxtapositions between them are intensified. This formal contraction produces an implosive momentum that brings the work to its turbulent conclusion.

Trespass was commissioned by the Oberlin Conservatory Contemporary Music Division, was written for the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Timothy Weiss, Director, and is dedicated to Marilyn Nonken.

A Fractured Silence (2004)

A Fractured Silence is a set of six brief vignettes that provide multiple perspectives on limited material. The work was commissioned by the Prism Saxophone Quartet for its twentieth anniversary and is dedicated to Nick Winter and Seong Chun in celebration of their marriage.

Mirror-glass skyscrapers (2004)

A companion piece to Performance, Mirror-glass skyscrapers follows its predecessor directly when performed. While the vocal setting contains novel material, all the piano music, with the exception of a brief solo and a momentary appearance of a truly polyphonic texture, is derived from the earlier work. Mirror-glass skyscrapers was written for Mary Nessinger, to whom it is dedicated.

16 (2003)

The work's title refers to the sixteen words that should have been excised from George Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This false claim illustrates the policy of deceit typical of the morally impoverished current administration. As an artist angered and ashamed by my country's actions, my deepest response is expressed in my work and my faith in art's ability to contribute to -- if not transform -- society.

16 was commissioned by the Auros Group for New Music with support from the Brannen-Cooper Fund and is dedicated to Susan Gall.

Performance (2001)

Performance was composed in response to a commission from "Works & Process" at the Guggenheim Museum to honor the work of Australian poet Les Murray. I chose this particular poem because of its exuberant celebration of virtuosity, its suggestive language, and its vivid stellar imagery, the latter being the inspiration for the pointillistic constellations in the piano music. Performance is dedicated to Mary Sharp Cronson in gratitude for her support of contemporary music.

Tongues (2001)

The title of this work refers to glossolalia, better known as "speaking in tongues," an ecstatic outburst of unintelligible vocal sounds that resembles spoken language. The vocal writing in Tongues evokes the volatile grip of possession that is said to hold the human vessels through which the divine or supernatural passes. In six sections that vary in instrumentation and character, the soprano articulates sounds that suggest the transformation from self-awareness to rapture. These sounds, not limited to phonetic utterances, often reflect the timbral properties of the accompanying ensemble. The soprano oscillates between influencing and imitating her instrumental counterparts, alternately supporting, amplifying, and leading the ensemble.

Tongues was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Libra Ensemble, who gave its first performance on 14 August, 2001, North Melbourne Town Hall, Australia, with Deborah Kayser, soprano.

After Serra (2000)

Although connections between the American sculptor Richard Serra's monolithic, post-minimalist works and my music may not be immediately apparent, I seek to convey in sound the simultaneous imposition and precariousness that I perceive in his pieces.

Serra's sculptures overwhelm the observer with their massive dimensions and sharply defined form. At the same time, they appear as if they might, with the slightest disturbance, collapse. As Serra's work disrupts the observer's sense of physical balance, "After Serra" similarly intends to undermine the listener's sense of temporal stability. My composition attempts to thwart expectations of formal and gestural continuity, juxtaposing a volatile and restless surface with steadily unfolding underlying processes.

"After Serra" was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University and is dedicated to Roger Redgate and the members of Ensemble Expose who gave the first performance on 5 April, 2000 at the Warehouse, London.

Transience (1999)

Transience is music in a perpetual state of change. The title refers to its mercurial surface, whose materials, never able take root in their surroundings, exist only in the moment. They are pulled by the force of their own momentum into an ever-changing present, which itself is simultaneously destroyed and rejuvenated by the irrepressible flux of transformation.

The work's structure is bound not by referential motifs or programmatic formal designs, but by extended metastatic processes that motivate local and global changes in pitch, rhythm, dynamic, register, and melodic contour. The resulting developmental progressions are either linear, unfolding in a continuous fashion, or fragmented, featuring the rapid succession of disparate materials. In part, the drama of Transience depends on the listener's retrospective assessment of the diverse musical landscapes traversed. Yet the emotive power of Transience is also closely tied to the intense physical demands made upon the performer.

Transience was commissioned by and is dedicated to Makoto Nakura, who gave the work's first performance at Suntory Hall, Tokyo on November 4, 1999.

A Glimpse Retraced (1999)

The title of this concerto for piano with four instruments is a metaphor for its formal design: a fleeting observation, made in passing, is retraced and elaborated, then condensed and distilled.

The figurative glimpse is represented by an introductory section of brief ensemble episodes, which together feature all possible combinations of the four instruments -- from solo to quartet -- that accompany the piano solo. After all instrumental combinations are exhausted, more detailed sections follow that are themselves generated from the material of the opening episodes; and, with regard to their instrumental combinations, they appear in the same order. The most extended of these are duets between a single instrument and the piano, which offer the opportunity for a second soloist to emerge and a foil to the piano's relentless activity throughout the rest of the work. The finale, an extended cadenza, is animated by a structural process similar to that heard in the introduction and main body of the piece, but reversed: the piano reiterates a radically imploded version of its former material, concluding with the same music, further compressed and retrograded.

A Glimpse Retraced was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and is dedicated to Marilyn Nonken who gave its first performance in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York City on April 12, 1999.

Polarities (1998)

Polarities is primarily concerned with various states of opposition: independence vs. subservience, accretion vs. degradation, expansion vs. contraction, and convergence vs. divergence. These oppositions are mediated by processes whose completion or disintegration mark formal boundaries within the work. The processes are themselves subject to interruptions, elisions, and sudden changes in velocity, resulting in interference patterns that skew the bearings of their kinetic momentum.

The clearest manifestation of these oppositions is the way in which instruments gather into groups and maintain their own independence. At times, an instrumental group may forcefully impose its identity on an instrument in another group, inspiring a defection. If an individual instrument's trajectory is unstable or weak, it may be subsumed by a group or drawn to another instrument. Conversely, a maverick instrument may break free from a group and stake its own musical pathway, even initiating the formation of a new instrumental group.

These oppositions, which inform the work's dramatic character and influence its underlying processes, never completely polarize the musical environment. Rather, they animate a discourse of conflict and struggle, a conflict that, at the work's end, has failed to be resolved.

This work was funded in part by the Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Program of the American Music Center.

Paths of Resistance (1997)

The dramatic tension in Paths of Resistance results from the thwarting and redirection of musical trajectories. Specific structural elements, which remain invariant throughout the work, recur in different and contradictory contexts, forging pathways through the densely polyphonic environment. In Paths of Resistance, the surface conflicts occur within the constraints of a formal design which bisects the musical flow into proportionally related time spans. The durations of these spans are embedded in several temporal strata, providing the palpable self-similarity, with regard to formal continuity, which underlies the work's volatile exterior.

Paths of Resistance was written for Geoffrey Morris, to whom it is gratefully dedicated.

Tango Clandestino (1997)

In my initial attempt to reconcile the stylistic and structural characteristics of the tango with those of my own music, I concentrated on amplifying and distorting particular features of the genre in this new piano composition. Soon, however, my work took on a life of its own, eclipsing the constraints I had set for it. In Tango Clandestino, any direct stylistic references have been obscured. Yet in other aspects, the work reflects my impressions of the tango, both musical and terpsichorean: it is imbued with its dark, angular, graceful, and sensual qualities.

Tango Clandestino was commissioned by the Phantom Arts Ensemble for Geoffrey Burleson, to whom it is dedicated.

Echoes' White Veil (1996)

This work was inspired substantially by W.S. Merwin's prose poem, "Echoes." It reads:

Everything we hear is an echo. Anyone can see that echoes move forward and backward in time, in rings. But not everyone realizes that as a result silence becomes harder and harder for us to grasp„though in itself it is unchanged„because of the echoes pouring through us out of the past, unless we can learn to set them at rest. We are still hearing the bolting of the doors of Thermopylae, and do not recognize the sounds. How did we sound to the past? And there are sounds that rush away from us: echoes of future words.

So we know that there are words in the future, some of them loud and terrible. And we know that there is silence in the future. But will the words recognize their unchanging homeland?

I am sitting on the shore of a lake. I am a child, in the evening, at the time when the animals lose heart for a moment. Everyone has gone, as I wanted them to go, and in the silence I call across the water, "Oh!" And I see the sound appear running away from me over the water in her white veil, growing taller, becoming a cloud with raised arms, in the dusk. Then there is such silence that the trees are bent. And afterwards a shock like wind, that throws me back against the hill, for I had not known who I was calling.

Echoes' White Veil was commissioned by Marilyn Nonken, to whom it is dedicated, with great admiration.

Tangled Loops (1996)

As its title implies, a characteristic of this composition is the irregular return of material. Specific gestural and harmonic elements can be heard cycling through the work and unifying disparate musical sections through their reappearance. Their repetition, however, is rarely exact; certain features of the returning music are reconfigured. Rather than recurring periodically, the reiterations occur at uneven intervals, at times overlapping, other times embedded within one another. This compositional strategy is the premise for the work's formal design, which distributes material in complex and unpredictable loops.

Tangled Loops was commissioned by Taimur Sullivan, to whom it is dedicated. I am grateful to the MacDowell Colony for granting me the opportunity to compose a significant portion of this work during a residency there in June, 1996.

Cuts (1996)

Cuts is a compositional Žtude of singular focus. Throughout this work, harmonic, rhythmic, and textural characteristics remain invariant, while the music's registral, dynamic, and timbral aspects witness continual mutation. The first minute of Cuts presents basic materials, and the remaining music is realized through their temporal, directional, and parametrical redistribution. Cuts is also an Žtude for the performer, as a certain virtuosity is required to bring the changing details of the musical surface into relief.

This work was written for Stefan Litwin and is dedicated to Milton Babbitt on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. I am grateful to the MacDowell Colony for granting me the opportunity to compose this work during a residency there in June, 1996.

Flux (1994)

As the title suggests, Flux is in a perpetual state of transformation. Although there are passing moments of relative stability, the music never finds lasting repose. This surface volatility is balanced by clear trajectories toward registral areas or textural densities that provide continuity and define the work's large-scale structure. Flux also pays homage to Elliott Carter's life and work and includes veiled references to his miniature masterpiece Enchanted Preludes.

Multiplicities (1993)

In this piece the flute, usually only responsible for projecting a single line, assumes multiple melodic responsibilities. Three individual lines stake their own pathways through an array of harmonic, registeral, dynamic, rhythmic, and articulative trajectories while simultaneously intermingling with one another. As such, the surface at times implies notes continuing while other lines, often violently, interrupt them. While the middle line remains intact throughout, the upper and lower lines shift their parametric assignments within the piece and return to the their original formation for the closing, which finds the polyphonic totality slowly transforming into a more homogeneous whole.