Composer

A contemporary Romantic

My compositions continue the tradition of the neglected masterpieces I love to perform. Composers like Vittorio Giannini, Nicolas Flagello, Ernest Bloch, Lili Boulanger, George Walker, and Paul Creston held to the emotional values of the great Romantics while using a harmonic language that was entirely individual. That is what I try to do in my music: to capture my listeners’ emotions in a personal, immediate way, and with a sound that is fresh yet familiar.

I have written five piano sonatas and other shorter pieces for piano, three flute sonatas, numerous song cycles and individual songs, choral works, and sonatas for violin, for trumpet, and for clarinet. I recently completed opera adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Prophetic Pictures.

The National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) has named me to its 2023-2024 Mentoring Program for Composers. The program will include a commissioned premiere by Cincinnati Song Initiative. In 2022, soprano Chelsea Hollow and pianist Taylor Chan recorded two selections from my Prayers for Peace–a cycle of prayer settings from the Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, and Catholic traditions–on their album Cycles of Resistance. Soprano Laura Strickling and pianist Daniel Schlosberg recorded “Prometheus’s Monster” from my cycle Any Moment Lonely on their Grammy-nominated 40@40 Project. My 2022-2023 season began with Craig Ketter’s premiere of my Transformations for Piano at the Long Island Composers’ Alliance 50th Anniversary Concert.

A Collaborative Composer

I have composed music to poetry written from the pre-Renaissance to just a few months ago. I love collaborating with poets and am particularly enthusiastic about setting texts by female-identifying, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC authors. Recent collaborators include award-winning poets Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Heather Bowlan, and Karen Poppy.