I wrote this violin sonata for my roommate during my two years studying at Peabody, Joe Kneer. I wrote it during the summer of 2008, and it will become a violin concertino once I finish orchestrating the piano part. The sonata consists of two movements - the first is a somewhat sonata-allegro form, contrasting a disjointed, wild main theme with a calm, whole-tone second theme; the second is a slow, elegiac teleological development of the Lutheran hymn tune, "Beautiful Savior."
This is another violin piece written for my girlfriend, Alexandra Dee. I wrote it in the first couple months of 2008 as a Valentine’s Day present for her. It is in a neo-classical style, making use of pandiatonicism. The form of the movement loosely follows the classical sonata-allegro form. I tried to write an exciting and challenging violin part to pair with the intricate piano part so the two instruments come across as equals.
This piece won the Donald Morrison Memorial Composition Competition and was premiered by Paul Wolfe, violin, and Dwight Oarr, piano, on May 11, 2008
I wrote this in the span of a day and a half during the fall of 2008 for my girlfriend’s keyboard skills class. She was required to find a piece to play as a final exam, and so I took the challenge to compose another easy piano piece. I think I succeeded in making it actually easy this time. The music is loosely modeled on Chopin’s e minor prelude.
It came to me one day in my first year at USC – what would it sound like to put ping-pong balls inside a piano? I tried it and I was more than pleased with the result. After developing a few techniques, I began writing this piece in late 2004, and ironically, it is the piece on this recital that I finished most recently.
Dark and Stormy Night was not meant to be programmatic, though it may seem that way. The music is based on a minor triad with a major third on top, an eerie-sounding chord. Later on, I state a twelve-tone row, the only use of serialism in any of my finished compositions. I develop it somewhat, but treat it only as another small building block on which the rest of the music evolves. And then there are the ping-pong balls…
I wrote this piece about a month after I wrote Two Together, and it is very much in a similar style. The 2006 Sarasota Music Festival was the last for Paul Wolfe, one of the founders 42 years ago. I wanted to write a tribute to this great man, and I took all the musical letters in his name (AFE) and used that as a motive around which the rest of the music flows.
Listen to a recording of Sandy Cameron, violin, and Pauline Yang, piano during an impromptu concert at the Sarasota Music Festival:
I composed this for Alex's and my two-year dating anniversary. One of my friends pointed out that Alex's first initial and last name - A. Dee - are all musical letters, so I made that into a motive on which the whole piece is based.
I became friends with a number of French Horn players at USC, and wanted to write a piece for them. In the fall of 2005, I had the idea to write a fugue for solo horn, where one voice is open and the other is stopped. This provides for a radically different sound for each voice, and also extreme virtuosity in performance. Of course, a fugue needs a prelude and then I decided to write a slow lyrical movement and a rousing finale.
My girlfriend, Alex, has always wanted me to write a pretty, tonal piece of music, so during the summer of 2004, I wrote this for us to play. Like the other compositions I wrote during this summer, I make a lot of use with ostinato, with a triplet pattern running through the entire composition, never faltering until the very end. Alex and I performed it on my recital in the summer of 2005.
Scintillation was performed again and recorded by Colin Sorgi, violin, and Hui-Chuan Chen, piano on October 5, 2008 at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore:
This is a minimalistic composition for piano duet, written late in the summer of 2004. The pianists trade playing a perpetual motion ostinato while the other repeats chords in a free but determined rhythmic pattern. Towards the end, the machine breaks down and the chords and ostinato yield to the pianists pounding away tone clusters with their palms. This was premiered at USC in the fall of 2004.
Listen to the premiere:
During the summers in Sarasota, I am an organist at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church. I started in 2003, and each week I decided to write a new composition to play during the offertory and communion. Each piece was slow and simple, with repeats to allow it to last as long as necessary. Eventually, I also cycled through these pieces for preludes and postludes. I now have over 20 short pieces in this album, and will continue writing more each summer that I am the organist.
I composed this piece in the span of a few hours one afternoon in the spring of 2004. This would make a fun encore piece for a flutist, being very virtuosic and fun.
This is a very short and simple piece for piano, composed in the spring of 2004. The harmonic content is sparse but is mainly quartal (based on the interval of the fourth). The rhythm flows freely between syncopation and mixed meter.
I wrote this composition for my spring 2004 composition class. The assignment was theme and variations. I chose to write a set of variations on the hymn tune that Mendelssohn quotes in the fourth movement of his c-minor piano trio. For such a glorious hymn tune, much of the theme and variations are very dark and dissonant, serving to highlight the beauty when I return to the original tonal harmonies. Throughout the course of the piece, I transform the hymn tune into the famous “Dies Irae” from the Mass of the Dead and include some eerie effects.
Listen to a performance for my composition class:
I started writing this in the fall of 2003 as an easy piano piece for a friend, but my musicality quickly exceeded how easy the music was, so it ended up being a somewhat complicated piece, at least from the standpoint of a beginning pianist. It is a very expressive piece, though, and I performed it on a recital during the summer of 2005. This music also became the source of the score of “Coda,” the first student film I scored.
Listen to my interpretation of November:
This was my first composition written at USC for my intro to composition class, written in the fall of 2003. The assignment was to write a set of three short compositions for a solo instrument. I wrote these for Elizabeth King, an oboist at USC who also happened to be from Florida. She premiered them in the spring of 2004.
This is one of my first award-winning compositions. First titled “crazy meter piece” when I wrote it in 2002, I won third place in the nation in the 2003 MTNA composition competition and I was the national winner for strings for the National Federation of Music Clubs composition competition in the same year. It was my first composition in which I freely change meters frequently, and it was a fast and virtuosic work. I had the privilege of performing this piece with violinist Aaron Krosnick for an MTNA event in Miami and later at the Delius Music Festival in Jacksonville.
Frolic received its concert premiere by violinist Jacques Israelievitch and pianist Rebecca Penneys in Sarasota, FL, in December of 2002.
Listen to a recording of Aaron Krosnick and myself playing Frolic:
This is a very early composition of mine, dating from my sophomore year in high school in 2000-2001. It was the result of two different assignments – one to write a character piece, and another to use polytonality, or multiple keys at the same time. The result was the “Schizo Scherzo,” a light-hearted piece with conflicting multiple personalities. Later on, I did some research on schizophrenia and found that multiple personalities was not actually related to the disorder, so I wrote two more movements that were actually pertinent.
Paranoia became my most-performed composition after I took it on the road. Its dark emotions and thrilling virtuosity made it a very popular piece for audiences. I performed it at the FSU Honors Piano Camp and at any performance venue at which I had the opportunity to perform.
Listen to Paranoia:
I wrote this in 2000 for my friend, Jeremy Halpern. It is a fun composition for double bass and piano, and we performed it in the Pine View School Variety Show in February 2001.
