Biography

Influences

some composers my age I like (who have websites):

(This list needs some serious lengthening)

  • Jenny Olivia Johnson. Jenny kicks ass. She's writing nifty post-minimalist stuff these days.
  • Nomi Epstein gets just amazing textures and colors in her music.
  • Sebastian Armoza brings such an incredible energy to the music that he writes. Especially check out "Nobuls."
  • Jonathan Mitchell, who is a composer and radio producer - typically both at once.

some "masters" whom I've learned a lot from

Again, this is a very short list that needs a lot of expansion... Particularly, I might even get more than one living composer up here soon!

  • It may not be a popular choice as a new music composer, but I have to admit that my favorite composer remains Brahms. I'm with Schoenberg when he calls Brahms "Progressive," but I also think it's a bit of a stretch to call Schoenberg a progressive... Nevertheless, the way Brahms generates huge works out of one interval, the way he integrates form and content - not to mention writes incredibly lyrical and emotional music - these boggle my mind.
  • I recently wrote an email, in French, about why I like Ligeti, so I ought to put it here, too, in a language in which I can write semi-competently... There are two main reasons that I like Ligeti. One is, plainly, his technique. I find that he wasn't particularly an "innovator," but everything he does - be it 12-tone, postmodern, based on folk music, fluxus, etc - is better than what his more-innovative contemporaries did with the same techniques/forms/styles/what-have-you.
    (You might be noticing a bit of a trend in my tastes towards stylistic synthesis.)
    The other reason I like Ligeti so much is his melodic ear. I think this really may be why his work out-shines so many others, and is something that a lot of composers of his aesthetic and generation eschewed. I find that in almost everything he wrote, but especially pre-1960 and post-mid-70s, there's something attractively hummable. And I think hummability is pretty important. There's just a connection with the audience, a sense of substance, that lacks when there's nothing at all to catch and hold onto. Hummability isn't the only way to do it, but it is one way.
  • The folks I'll call tonecolorists - to me particularly Morton Feldman, George Crumb, Berio, and Scelsi. Feldman taught me that I could slow down and lighten up my textures and still pass along that sense of substance, a lesson I admittedly still haven't fully assimilated. Crumb's textures - and the way he uses them the same way some people use harmony - is also instructive. Scelsi takes it a step further and uses color and harmony as the same thing. Berio, I imagine, isn't everyone's idea of a tonecolorist, but his work feels to me particularly painterly.

some organizations that I like:

some performers I like:

  • Tami Morse. When I arrived at Stony Brook, I had an engrained suspicion of early music players. This was mostly the result of an ugly incident with the bureaucracy at Columbia University (unfortunately, googling "Columbia University bureaucracy" doesn't yield anything interesting enough to link to...). But when I got to Stony Brook, I discovered, much to my surprise, that early music players are not the most conservative of the bunch, as I had assumed, but in fact tend to be the very same people who are interested in playing new music. Tami gets special mention because she also convinced me that the harpsichord is awesome (it didn't take much convincing, really, it just sounds so cool!). She also got me interested in unequal temperament tunings, which I haven't done anything with yet, but I will.
  • Violinist Marc Levine
  • Flying Forms, the group Marc and Tami are in. I've been writing lots for them.
  • QNG. Just go seem them live. They've got a new CD, too!
  • Amie M, who plays French horn. In her own pop band, that I happen to like a lot.
  • Cellist Jody Redhage. I have to admit that, back in TYP, Jody didn't seem to me to be the most likely person to end up an avid new music performer. But it's awfully cool that she did...
  • The Orfeo Duo: see above
  • Andrew D'Angelo, Samuel Andreyev (he's a composer, too, sometime I'll hear something else by him), Esther Noh, Louella Alatiit, and Lev Zhurbin, among others, have played my music in various ad hoc ensembles.
  • I suppose my dad qualifies as an influence. Also see here for nifty solar power solutions to your energy bills.
  • The Enloe Symphony Orchestra, my favorite high school orchestra.
  • The Triangle Youth Philharmonic, the youth orchestra I played in in high school, and for whom I will someday soon write a piece about mirrors on the RER. Not to be confused with my high school orchestra.
  • The Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players
 
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