12/1/12: I will be a composer fellow at the 2013 Intimacy of Creativity workshop in Hong Kong this spring. Run by composer Bright Sheng, the program is an intense 2-week workshop where I will be revising and performing my composition, Geometries. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to spend two weeks in Hong Kong, working with world-class musicians. You can read more about the program at http://www.ic.shss.ust.hk/2013/eng/index.html.
11/19/12: I just got back home from my week-long residency with the Sioux City Symphony. The first couple days were spent traveling around the area presenting about my music to a couple colleges, and I also taught a composition masterclass to students at the University of South Dakota. I got a chance to see a most incredible historical collection of instruments at the National Music Museum, hidden away in Vermillion, SD. Working with the orchestra was great, and the premiere of Spectral Fanfare and performance of Aerodynamics on the 17th went extremely well.
I have also learned that the recent performance of Green Flash will be broadcast on the radio by King FM in Seattle on Wednesday November 21 at 8 PM Pacific. Link to the program is here and you can listen to the station streaming online here. Green Flash is third on the program following the two works by Gershwin.
10/1/12: I'm very excited to announce a few more honors I have recently picked up. I am the 2012-13 Sioux City SymphonyComposer of the Year, and will be in residence with them for a week in mid-November. I'm currently writing a brand new fanfare for brass and percussion that they will premiere, and they will also perform Aerodynamics on their November 17 program. During my residency, I will be presenting about my music at various events in the community in Iowa and nearby in South Dakota.
I'm also happy to announce that I am a semi-finalist in the southeast region in the 2012 Rapido! Competition, in which I was given a prompt in early June and the piece was due two weeks later. My work, Irlandzki Polonez, will be premiered by the Atlanta Chamber Players on October 14 in Atlanta.
Finally, I have been working on a project this summer to transcribe my string orchestra composition, Mare Tranquillitatis, for wind ensemble. Through the help of H. Robert Reynolds, there are 29 bands from around the country that have joined the consortium and will be premiering this transcription in the near future. I feel like this piece has incredible potential as a band work and I look forward to hearing so many renditions of it this coming year.
7/5/12: I just updated my performances page to be as up to date as possible with a handful of new additions this summer and early fall. The Tacoma Symphony will be performing Green Flash alongside Debussy's La Mer this October, and a brand new saxophone quartet is going to be performed a handful of times by the University of Michigan Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet.
I have also been chosen to participate in the inaugural CULTIVATE emerging composer institute at Copland House later this summer. Under direction by Michael Boriskin and Derek Bermel, I will be participating in the workshop with four of my peers from July 31 through August 5.
In other news, my first publication with FJH Music has been released in their 2012-2013 catalog. You can read a great description of Mare Tranquillitatis and hear a new recording of the work on FJH's website.
The concert opened with Roger Zare’s "Green Flash" which refers to the moment when sunset ends. Zare is the winner of the 2012 Young Composers Competition. The composer conjures vivid atmospherics with exotic percussion and eerie string bends, yet the abstractions are inviting rather than jarring.
The almost inaudible low rumble of the orchestra builds to a sonic density, flares then vanishes, the receding lower strings still humming. It’s an evocative work and Zare was on hand to hear how well it was received.
4/21/12: Yesterday, I received a piece of paper from the Rackham Graduate School here at UMich stating that I had completed all the requirements for the doctorate of musical arts in composition. I'm very excited to have completed my schooling! My dissertation is a new work for orchestra, a ten-minute piece called Tectonics. I have posted a recording on the new Tectonics page, as well as new recordings of Roaring Fork and Mare Tranquillitatis.
4/6/12: I'm honored to be selected as a winner of a 2012 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould award for my clarinet concerto, Bennu's Fire. I also recently found out that I was selected for this year's Omaha Symphony New Music Symposium with a brand new orchestral work, Inferno. I'm very much looking forward to its premiere at the end of May.
About a month ago, I had the privilege of working with the fantastic pianist, Stephen Gosling, as part of a great program by a new music ensemble all of you should know about, the American Modern Ensemble. The concert was sports-themed, and was even written up in Sports Illustrated. Check out the video below of Gosling's performance Dark and Stormy Night, with Meighan Stoops as the obligato page turner and almost 300 ping pong balls.
3/5/12: I'm excited to announce that Road Trip is a semifinalist for the Villiers Quartet new music competition! Three finalists will be chosen after a month of online voting. Please head over to the competition page, register, and vote for your favorite piece (which will hopefully be Road Trip.) Thanks!
1/16/12: Happy new year! I have a few performances coming up in a few weeks, and a couple more lined up through the summer. I just found out a few days ago that the UNT Wind Symphony programmed Lift-Off on their first concert of the semester, on February 16 at 8:30 Eastern, 7:30 Central. A video feed of the concert will be streamed live, and you'll be able to link to it from their wind studies webpage. Just before that performance, I'll be taking part in a symposium at the University of Oklahoma called 4x4 prizes, where four composers and four conductors are selected to participate. The orchestra will be rehearsing Green Flash, and if chosen as the winner or runner-up, it will be performed on February 12th. I've also got upcoming performances of a new work for organ in early February and another performance of Lift-Off by the University of Michigan Concert Band on March 11.
I was informed recently that one of my choral works received honorable mention in the Pacific Chorale's Young Composer Competition. I've put in a media player below for the chosen work, Invocation. It is a reading by the USC Concert Choir, with the rehearsal piano part, but it is meant to be an a cappella piece. Invocation has not yet been performed, so if you are interested in arranging the premiere, please contact me.
I've also been commissioned to write a new work for the Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival, held in August in Maine. I'm also working on a new work for basset clarinet and piano for clarinetist Peter Wright, to be premiered at ICA's ClarinetFest this summer, and a cycle for soprano and violin for two of my colleagues from my studies at Peabody.
I'll leave you with a new video of Dark and Stormy Night for piano with ping pong balls and obligato page turner, performed by Kayako Matsunaga and me last October at the University of Michigan.
