Chamber Music

Commissioned by South Mountain Concerts. Premiered Pittsfield, MA, September 16, 2004, by the Muir Quartet.

Instrumentation: Two violins, viola, and cello.

Commissioned by Joel Pitchon. The second movement is based on the third movement ("The Symphony") from The White Whale.

Instrumentation: Violin, cello, and piano

Movements:

1. Incisivo
2. Adagio cantabile e sostenuto ("The Symphony")
3. Scorrevole

Text based on the poem "Breathe Into Me" by Gary Lowery. A piece especially appropriate for a wedding.

Voice: Soprano and baritone

Instrumentation: Keyboard

Commissioned by Boston Musica Viva. Three poems by the German author reflecting on Germany after World War II. The first poem, "Gleisdreieck," was inspired by the train station of the same name on Berlin's elevated railway. The second poem, "Klappstühle" ("Folding Chairs"), uses the chairs as a metaphor for the impermanence of home caused by the war. The final poem, "Schlaflos" ("Sleepless"), is the nightmarish vision of a man with insomnia counting himself to sleep by recounting his life. Eventually he confronts his own and his nation's guilt, for which it seems there is no atonement.

Voice: Mezzo-Soprano

Instrumentation: Flute (doubling piccolo, alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet, alto sax), violin, viola, cello, piano, tape

Movements:

1. Gleisdreieck
2. Klappstühle
3. Schlaflos

NOTE:Performance materials available on rental. Study score for sale.

Written for soprano Gretchen d'Armand.

Voice: Soprano

Instrumentation: Horn, piano

Movements:

1. The Sun's Travels
2. Rain
3. The Swing
4. At the Sea-Side
5. Auntie's Skirts
6. Happy Thought
7. Summer Sun

The White Whale is a musical projection of Ahab's madness as revealed in fragments of soliloquy and dialogue from nine different chapters of Moby Dick. The four movements do not attempt to mirror Melville's continous narrative. Instead, they reflect some of the novel's greatest discontinuities by juxtaposing paradoxical aspects of Ahab's character — aspects which are revealed one by one in non-successive chapters strung out like beads on a chain throughout the book — in a radically compressed time frame. The compression heightens awareness of the depth and complexity of Ahab's personality and of his relationship to the whale while creating a particular dramatic tension of its own.

Voice: 
Baritone

Instrumentation: Flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), bassoon, contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, piano (doubling celesta), percussion (two players), strings

Movements:

1.  The Prisoner
2.  In Nomine Diaboli
3.  The Symphony
4.  A Hump Like a Snow-Hill

Commissioned by Boston Musica Viva.

Voice: Tenor

Instrumentation: flute (doubling alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion (one player), violin, viola, cello, piano

Written in memory of Phillips Perera, the composer's brother, a talented amateur painter. The work celebrates the creative artist in painting, poetry, and sculpture.

Voice:  2 sopranos

Instrumentation: Flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, 2 violins, viola, cello, contrabass, piano

Movements:

1. Sky Above Clouds
2. The Writer
3. After Brancusi

The Writer is the second movement of the larger work, Visions. It is based on Richard Wilbur's narrative poem and concerns a young writer—the poet's daughter—who is writing her first story. The setting and the poem capture the writing process, from the tapping of fitful typing to the frenzied attempts to express a thought to the lyrical soaring of clear expression.

Voice: Soprano

Instrumentation: Flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and piano

Five songs on poems of Emily Dickinson. Arrangement of the 1972 songs for medium voice and piano (ECS Publishing #161). The poems included are New Feet Within My Garden Go, South Winds Jostle Them, I Know a Place, To Make a Prairie, and The One That Could Repeat the Summer Day.

This arrangement was commissioned by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony.

Voice: Mezzo-soprano

Instrumentation: Harp, piano (doubling celesta), percussion (one player), and strings