 I am available for: Recitals Lectures & Workshops Commissioned Compositions Private Instruction Weddings, Memorial Services, and Other Celebrations |
I am a composer, organist, harpsichordist, choral conductor, and teacher living in Baltimore, Maryland (USA). Since 1997 I have been Organist and Director of Music at Grace and St. Peter's Episcopal Church where I direct a professional choir and play a 1922 Austin organ of over sixty ranks at weekly celebrations of High Mass in the Anglo-Catholic liturgical tradition. I have also held similar positions in Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. My series of liturgical compositions began with anthems and responses written for a small volunteer choir in 1978 and continue through my most recent major work, Requiem Pro Silens (2009) for two mezzo-soprano soloists, mixed choir and organ. Outside the realm of church music, I have composed song cycles, works for string quartet, flute, solo piano, and chamber orchestra, as well as incidental music for several of Shakespeare's plays. I am currently at work on a new string quartet and a large operatic project as well as several smaller liturgical pieces. In the 1980s I made serious study and use of twelve-tone, aleatoric, and serial techniques, and while I have abandoned atonality as a primary means of expression, I have since applied many of those same techniques to tonal materials. My most recent work has been strongly influenced by Byzantine Liturgical Chant and other Asiatic sound-worlds. My philosophy as a musician has been informed by my belief that human beings are spiritual beings who are naturally drawn to the divine. Music -- as well as all the other arts -- should be an opening to a state where our ego-driven attachments and aversions no longer separate us from that divinity or from each other. |
