Composer
“Petite Voiture Rouge” is dedicated to my son Louis who loves very much the little red car he and I bought together for him. I wrote this piece last Spring after we purchased the car. I wanted to portray a spacious feeling as if he and I were driving on a beautiful country road.
Purchase my “Battling Butterflies” CD:
For Solo Bassoon
“Tiptoe Through the Hollow” is in five sections. A creature tip toes through a forest in the first section, and stumbles upon an ominous celebration in a clearing (second section). It manages to escape (third section) and interprets a victory dance (fourth section). The piece ends as the creature tip toes again through the forest.
Performed by Sean Martin
For Brass Quintet
The title of my composition refers to the ups and downs of the stock market, and the lack of rationale behind those. I developed an ostinato figure that is present throughout the piece. It symbolizes in Music the graphs that are so frequently used to visualize financial markets.
Performed by the New Era Brass Quintet:
For Soprano and Chamber Ensemble
I wrote an eccentric and bittersweet short poem in French contemplating the end of Summer. Fin de l’Eté sets this poem to music. Fin de l’Eté is in A A B A song form. For the A sections, the Soprano and Clarinet interact in a call-and-response fashion. During the B section the Marimba picks up the melody line from the soprano.
Upon listening to music by Steve Reich and especially Philip Glass, I became intent on the idea of writing my own minimalist music. The music is in A B A’ form. Initially my idea was to write a twelve-tone piece. A used only six tones, while B relied entirely on the complementary six tones. I later decided to relax this constraint for several reasons, one of which being that the piece wasn’t strictly serial.
This piece is dedicated to my daughter Stella who gave the music its title after listening to a MIDI playback on the computer
Purchase my “Battling Butterflies” CD:
For Guitar and Violoncello
I was inspired to compose for this duo of instruments after practicing with Jill for my own guitar exam. In When the Day Ends the Cello and Guitar trade melodies and accompany each other using arpeggiated triads. In a contrasting section, the guitar plays chords over the cello’s bass line. The melodies return as well as the chords for the coda.
Jill Hirsh, Violoncello
Christopher Mann, Guitar