I’m thrilled to be presenting on my piece Red Wind today to the composers in the School of Music at the University of Florida, Gainesville. It’s a pleasure to share my work with them, and to see my good friend Scott Lee in his new role as Assistant Professor of Composition here at UF.

I’m happy to be spending the first four weeks of 2020 back at the Hermitage Artist Retreat doing a residency. It’s quite a shock to go from full-blown winter in Boston to what feels like summer here in Florida. I’m excited to get to work on a bunch of projects for the coming year, including a commission from the Tanglewood Music Center, a piece for flute, harp, and viola commissioned by harpist Chloe Tula, and sound design for a new play at Duke, Angel Mounds by Valerie Muensterman, on which I’ll be collaborating with my friend Matt Campbell.

I’m still elated from the fantastic premiere of my dissertation piece Red Wind, which took place on July 21st in Ozawa Hall at the Tanglewood Music Center. Thank you so much to the players who made it come to life in a riveting performance: Olivia Cosio, Ben Quarles, Federico Montes, David Kidd, Greg LaRosa, Gabe Polinksy, and Killian Farrell who conducted. And a huge thank you to Nathaniel Mackey, whose poetry inspired and breathed life into this project. The performance was of the last two movements of the piece, and I’m hoping that down the road the entire work will be produced.

---

Now I’m looking forward to the remaining composition projects here at Tanglewood, including my score to accompany a silent film, Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality, as part of the Festival of Contemporary Music on August 10th. On August 17th, at the end of the festival, we’ll get to hear three pieces we each wrote over the course of a day for three days straight, brought to life by the incredible Fromm Players.

Thrilled to be in Salt Lake City for the Utah Arts Festival and the premiere of Gramarye, which was commissioned for this year’s event. It’s been a pleasure working with Sinfonia Salt Lake and and conductor Rob Baldwin on this new work. We had a productive recording session today at the University of Utah, and tomorrow is the premiere at the Salt Lake City Library Auditorium.

I’ve enjoyed a productive and stimulating residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida these past few weeks. It’s been a delight to get to know the work of my fellow residents and to swim in the ocean every day. I’m already looking forward to returning for another residency here in early 2020.

I’m looking forward to the premiere tonight of Bad Roads, my second play at Duke in 2019 as sound designer. It’s been a pleasure working with director Jody McAuliffe and a fantastic crew on making this production come to life. Bad Roads is a new play by documentary playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit, the leading Ukrainian playwright of her generation. As Jody notes “This is a powerful play that explores what it’s like to be a woman in wartime, specifically in Ukraine, and the collateral damage suffered by women in war.” It’s certainly been a challenge confronting this material, but I particularly enjoyed dusting off my synthesizers for the incidental music. The show runs from April 4-14 and plays in the Sheafer Lab Theater in the Bryan Center on west campus.

I have been invited to the Tanglewood Music Center this summer as a Composition Fellow. I’m eagerly looking forward to the premiere of select movements of Red Wind, as well as to working with the prestigious faculty and guest composers. More information to follow as the festival draws near.

My time this year at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music has been extremely fulfilling and productive. Tonight the Del Sol Quartet premieres my new string quartet Comb in San Francisco alongside new works by fellow Cycle 5 composers Aaron Garcia, Anjna Swaminathan, Antonio Celaya, Jonah Gallagher, and Erika Oba. I’m so thankful to work with such amazing musicians and I couldn’t be more excited for this concert.

I’m delighted to have won the 2019 Utah Arts Festival Chamber Commission competition. The prize is a new piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion to be premiered by Sinfonia Salt Lake at the Festival in June. I’m looking forward to heading out to Utah for the first time to work with these great players.

I’m thrilled to be in Memphis this fall doing a residency at Crosstown Arts. It’s exciting to be in the thick of it with other musicians, artists, filmmakers, and poets. Today I had the pleasure of presenting my music at the University of Memphis, where I met professors Kamran Ince and John Baur along with many talented student composers. Here’s a link to my artist talk at Crosstown that I did in September: Crosstown Artist Talk.