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.

I’m honored to have been awarded the Hermitage Prize from the Aspen Music Festival and School. I’ll be heading to The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota for a 6-week residency sometime this coming year and I couldn’t be more excited for it. What’s more, this morning Joshua Hong led the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra in the second reading this summer of my new orchestra piece Door to the River. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to workshop this piece here in Aspen with Josh and such amazing musicians!

I’m pleased to be in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer attending the Aspen Music Festival and School as a Schumann composition fellow. Looking forward to working with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis, and to the premiere of Tarot Teller for Pierrot ensemble, which will be premiered by the Aspen Chamber Players. A new, short work for orchestra, Door to the River, will be read in conjunction with the Aspen Conducting Academy later in the summer.

This morning I successfully defended my dissertation “Red Wind for Soprano, Narrator, and Chamber Ensemble, Bass Cathedral for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble, Red Wind (Desert Remix) for Generative Software, and Form and Exhaustion in Pascal Dusapin’s Quad – In Memoriam Gilles Deleuze” at Duke University. My committee was co-chaired by John Supko and Stephen Jaffe, who were joined by Scott Lindroth and Bill Seaman. Huge thanks to them and to everyone who has supported me on my musical journey.

It was great to participate today in a residency with Nahid and Alsarah of Alsarah & The Nubatones at the Durham School of the Arts. After a stunning performance by the band, the DSA chorus treated us by singing Alsarah’s “3roos Elneel (Bride of the Nile,” which I had arranged for SAB mixed chorus. This is the first of a series of US-based Muslim artists Duke Performances is bringing to Durham as part of a project that seeks to combat Islamophobia and strengthen understanding, through music, between local Muslim and non-Muslim communities. I am thrilled to have been a part of it and to have shared in the experience with the students at DSA and the Nubatones.

Bravo to clarinetist David Angelo and the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, led by Matthew Marsit, on a fantastic first performance of <em>Bass Cathedral</em> last Friday at Old South Church in Boston. The piece is based on the novel of the same name by Nathaniel Mackey, and is featured in my dissertation at Duke.

Excited to have been admitted to the Aspen Music Festival and School as a composition fellow for the summer of 2018. During my residency there ensembles will premiere forthcoming works for orchestra and chamber ensemble.

The recording of my dissertation piece Red Wind is now up under Recordings and Scores (click the reveal box next to Chamber Music to access it). The work sets the poetry of Nathaniel Mackey to music for narrator, soprano, and chamber ensemble. Many thanks to Mr. Mackey, the wonderful players, and Duke Performances for their hard work putting this recording together.