Cucumbers and Gin (2007 rev. 2009)
I wrote this flashy solo violin piece for my friend, collaborator and No Signal member Sean-David Cunningham, and after a couple revisions he premiered it in 2009. The piece features extremely wide intervals played very slowly and extremely small intervals played very quickly.
Crystal Tresses in the Sky (2007)
I wrote this solo vibraphone piece for No Signal percussionist, Greg Jukes, with whom I tend to talk food and weird books. I tried to give him a very crystalline, delicate piece, and took the title from Henry VI, part 1.
Expanse (2007)
I don’t usually write pieces about my own feelings, but this cello solo is one of two exceptions. The piece takes long, slow-moving harmonies to put forward a very unpleasant feeling. I wrote the piece in about an hour, with only a few revisions, and gave it as a birthday present to cellist Marcus Johnson.
I Don’t Know Why I Feel This Way (2007)
This piece is another solo work expressing a single, and very negative feeling. This solo marimba work I gave to No Signal percussionist Michael Compitello. He and his professor, Robert Van Sice, taught me a fantastic amount about writing for the marimba, one of my favorite instruments.
Twelve Mummers (2003)
This string quartet is really a set of games and jokes. I took one of my favorite christmas carols, The Sussex Mummer’s Carol, and combined it with some original twelve-tone material in a set of often very light-hearted variations. The two most playful variations feature the carol turned upside down and into a baroque dance, and the twelve-tone material turned into a blues.
