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2009-10
2008
2007
2006
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5/7/10: I added another trip to my summer plans: I was selected, along with four other composers, to participate in the Omaha Symphony New Music Symposium, a workshop and performance with the Omaha Chamber Symphony that will happen June 1-3, with Joseph Schwantner in residence. My work, The Other Rainbow, was selected, and it will receive its first professional performance on June 3rd. It was originally written for the New York Youth Symphony as a First Music commission in 2005.
Also, I posted the recording of White on White for clarinet and piano from David Snyder's master's recital on March 29th. Click on the title on my solo music page to listen to it.
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4/2/10: I'll be adding another trip to my itinerary this summer. I was one of three composers chosen for the Cabrillo Music Festival Composer-Conductor workshop in Santa Cruz, CA, in the beginning of August. Aerodynamics will be performed on an "in the works" concert on August 4 by members of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by two or three of the conducting participants. I am very much looking forward to working with the composer in residence, Jennifer Higdon, and the festival conductors, Marin Alsop and Gustav Meyer. For more information on the festival, visit http://www.cabrillomusic.org/
Also, I uploaded the video from my recent performances of Basho Haiku for soprano, percussion and string quartet (finished January 2010) at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and embedded it at the end of this entry. A recording of my other 2010 composition, White on White, for clarinet and piano will be posted soon.
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3/3/10: After the two performances of Time Lapse with the ACO, I was lucky enough to have a third performance less than a month later with the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, with Dana Sadava conducting. For this performance, I created a version of the piece for double winds and 4.3.3.1. brass to allow some of the larger textures to be more expansive. This performance, on February 25, went extremely well, and a recording is posted on my Time Lapse page.
I am also happy to report that I am a recipient of a 2010 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. I am very honored to receive this distinction.
My plans for this summer are becoming clearer. I will be working at the Sarasota Music Festival during the first three weeks of June, after which I will be heading to the Aspen Music Festival Composition Masterclass Program until July 23rd. There I will work with Christopher Rouse and Steven Stucky and will receive a premiere of a new chamber work as well as an orchestral reading. Towards the end of August, I will be the composer in residence of the UBS Chamber Music Festival in Lexington, Kentucky, and I will have a premiere there as well.
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1/31/10: I just returned to Michigan after a very successful premiere of Time Lapse by the American Composers Orchestra. The rehearsal process was exhilarating and I think the piece came together amazingly well. The New York Times gave a good review, and I will post a recording of the work as soon as I am able to.
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12/12/09: The press release for the American Composers Orchestra concert that will have the premiere of my work, Time Lapse, was just released. Read about the concert here.
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11/30/09: The Minnesota Orchestra premiere of Aerodynamics was amazing. It was such a thrill to work with an orchestra so dedicated and a conductor who is so generous. For the time being, the recording of the premiere is available for streaming on the MPR.org website, so I do encourage you to head over there and listen to it.
In other news, I completed my commission for the American Composers Orchestra, Time Lapse, and it is all set for its premiere in Carnegie Hall on January 29. It is a single-movement 15' work that takes inspiration from the concepts of two kinds of artistic photography: time-lapse photography, in which the motion of slowly moving objects is sped up and large periods of time are reduced to seconds; and high-speed photography, in which the motion of a high-speed object is slowed down to become perceptible to our senses. The music explores these two kinds of temporal perception, as motivic ideas are developed through expansion and contraction. With numerous distinct sound worlds, the piece utilizes the vibrant spectrum of orchestral colors, featuring an array of suspended cymbals and the unique sound of magnetic tape applied to the strings of the piano and harp. The piece grows from concise motivic ideas to sweeping gestures to give the listener a sense of a vast and timeless expanse.
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5/24/09: I'm happy to announce that my string orchestra work, "A Midsummer's Daydream," just won the ASTA Merle J. Isaac composition contest. The press release should be available in June.
On May 21, I officially graduated from the Peabody Conservatory with my Master of Music degree. My stay at Peabody seems very brief to me, but I made a number of important connections while I was there. I head to Ann Arbor to begin my DMA studies at the University of Michigan this fall.
I also have a video of a performance up on youtube. This is definitely my silliest composition; it was written for a pop culture themed SONAR concert and I chose to imitate a malfunctioning iPod on shuffle. There is a violin concertino that runs through the work, with sporadic, well... you'll see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9espwyQbYc
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4/30/09: I just edited and uploaded a new video to youtube - the premiere of "La Zebu Forte Overture" for string orchestra. It is a parody of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, with a bit of Queen of the Night thrown in for fun. You can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfs4PzX0s7g
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4/22/09: The Disintegration performance last Thursday was amazing! I just posted a recording on the chamber music page and created a Disintegration page with the videos from both performances.
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4/13/09: I've got a few newsworthy items at the moment - 1) I will be attending the University of Michigan next year as a DMA candidate beginning in the fall. 2) My new orchestral work, Aerodynamics, received a BMI student composer award! 3) My chamber work, Disintegration, won 3rd prize in the Peabody Composition Department's Prix d'Ete, and will be performed this Thursday, April 16, at noon in Peabody's Friedberg hall.
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1/14/09: I was just informed that my orchestral work, Lift-Off, is going to be performed by the Sarasota Orchestra on their 60th Anniversary Gala, "Ice and Fire." The program is on January 24 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota, FL.
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1/12/09: My work, Green Flash, has been chosen as the recipient of the 2009 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize.
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