Five things I learned writing my first piece for orchestra
During the peak of the pandemic when I had little else to do, I decided to devote most of my all-too-plentiful time and what little energy I had to writing a piece for orchestra, something I’d wanted to do since I began composing back in high school. I’d had a couple ideas for orchestral works…
Subito 2022: Women Pioneers of Electronic Music
My biggest accomplishment of the last year was being the lead editor of the fifth edition of Subito, Portland State’s student-run music journal. I’m proud of my work for this issue, and I am happy with how the whole issue came out. Subito offers a great opportunity for students of music at Portland State to…
George Lewis, Improvisation, and the Rhizome
This is the written portion of a presentation by the same name I gave at the College Music Society’s Northwest Chapter conference. George Lewis is one of the most significant composers in the world of computer music and improvisation. Beginning his musical career as a trombonist with the AACM (American Association of Creative Musicians) on…
CV Update June 2022: First year of Grad School, Album and future posts
I haven’t had as much time lately to devote to working on this site thanks to graduate school, but now that summer is here I will have more opportunities to publish things, including some of the papers I wrote for classes I am most proud of. It was a busy year, and next year is…
The Tragic Self-Image of Kanye West in Jeen-yuhs
I’ve been watching the new documentary on Kanye West, Jeen-yuhs, over the last few weeks. For someone who may only know Kanye for his recent output, his controversies and media persona, this documentary purports to show the opposite. It humanizes someone who has long passed the point where Kanye West the celebrity became a virus…
Excerpt from Work in Progress: The Party Scene
I stood outside Gretchen’s door. She had lost track of time. She opened her door and invited me in while putting on her earrings. I followed her into her bathroom where she was getting ready for the night. She put on her makeup––subtle eyeliner, lipstick, foundation and light blush––and spritzed herself with perfume. I asked…
Excerpt from Work In Progress: “Mephistopheles’ Monologue”
Over the summer I began work on a novel. I got fairly far, though I couldn’t finish it, and I probably couldn’t finish it without major revisions. Nonetheless, I wish to publish some of the better passages. This section I call “Mephistopheles’ Monolgoue,” for reasons that will become clear. When Mephistopheles enters a room full…
Favorite books I read in 2021 (and 2020)
If I can be so presumptive and assume that people are interested to hear what books I read this year, here are the ones I liked the most. To keep myself from rambling, I’ll keep my summaries of each book to one or two sentences. These are organized by the order in which I read…
Quarantine Diaries: December 16
So the good news is, I finished my first term of grad school with straight As, finished two great research papers and two compositions, and I’m nearly done with my album. The bad news, in case you couldn’t tell from the title, is that I have Covid-19. I thought it wouldn’t happen and I got…
Performance: Rewire, December 2nd
I’m performing tonight in Lincoln Hall 115 at 8 pm, as the final project for one of my classes this term. The concert, called “Rewire,” is a series of performances for live electronic music, with a wide variety of music between the sets. My piece, titled “Exit/No Exit,” is for piano and live effects processing…
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Continuous Variations 