Category: Chamber

As a violinist and a violist, I have long enjoyed playing duets between the two, Mozart’s examples being of course the cornerstone of the genre. Written for my friends Miya Saito-Beckman and Nicholas Sharma, my sonata for violin and viola explores the delight of the two-instrument, two-person interaction, and tries, with minimal forces, to capture a large variety of colors and feelings, with a certain character of implying much rather than directly stating things. The “Four Poems” in the title are secret, confessional little poems I wrote after the music, characterizing what parts of my life experience each movement seemed to be responding to. The first movement begins with a chilly-yet-tender slow introduction. An energetic but lyrical Allegro follows, somehow evoking both Brahms and Prokofiev, and tense with development. The second movement Minuet and Trio is pure chamber music, delighting in the interaction of the instruments—this is my personal favorite to play. Mvts. 3 and 4 are much darker than the first two. Mvt. 3 has a sense of grief about it, beginning as it does with a mournful viola solo, after which it explores the delicate combination of muted violin and viola pizz. The final movement has a fiery quality, fanciful, yes, but also nervous, even neurotic.

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Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in E minor (2023)

This piece was premiered in May 2024 in Spain by Juan Aguilera Cerezo and Santiago Báez and recorded shortly thereafter for release on my debut album. This large-scale sonata represents perhaps my most mature fusion of Romantic and Modern influences into an expressive and individual vision. The first movement revels in winding chromatic harmony while yet making ample space for lyricism, and of course, dialogue between the two instrumental protagonists. The movement’s structure is an individual take on the classical sonata form: a prolonged allegro exposition, already rich in development, and in place of a development, a nested slow movement—something of an eye in the center of the more turbulent and stormy exposition and recapitulation. The movement’s coda retreats to the inner slow movement’s tempo and figuration, but amidst the starkest of textures, sets the main allegro theme in this more tragic context. The second movement is a large theme-and-variations-qua-finale in the tradition of Beethoven’s op. 109 and op. 111 piano sonatas. Based on a simple theme presented in starkest terms, variations 1-3 increase in chromatic complexity and chaotic sense of rhythm. Variation 4 is slow and melancholically expressive—perhaps the emotional heart of the set. Variation 5 picks up the tempo, only to yield to another slow variation, this time more lilting, a lullaby reminiscent of Brahms, and the only variation in major. The final variation ends the work with fitting intensity, and briefly recalls the main theme of the first movement.

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Do I Wake or Sleep? Triosatz for Flute, Violin, and Bass clarinet (2023)

Commissioned by the Walden School 2023 Young Musicians Program Faculty Commissioning Project, this trio was written for and premiered by TAK ensemble. The piece is conceived as an ethereal exploration of liminality, portraying, as the title (a quote from Keats) suggests, an in-between state of consciousness. The piece is a simple ternary form: A fast, alternatively delicate and aggressive section gives way to a slower lyrical tune written for violin, sul G. After the winds take up the melody, the flutist is asked to improvise a cadenza, and following this, there is brief recapitulation of the opening fast material before the piece seems to evaporate into nothing.

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Sonata for Violoncello Solo, “Three Maxims of Delphi” (2022)

Each movement of this substantial work, commissioned by Juan Aguilera Cerezo, takes inspiration from one of the three famous pieces of wisdom inscribed on the portico of the Temple of Delphi: “Gnothi seauton” (Know thyself), “Meden agan” (Nothing in excess), and “Eggua para d’ate” (A pledge brings ruin). Each of these statements forms a starting point for musical reflection—the first movement’s intense polyphony emphasizes emotional honesty and self-awareness, not only in the music itself, but also in highlighting the vulnerability of the performer; the second describes a world that while full of emotion, is elegantly circumscribed and refined; the third, a Passacaglia, “pledges” itself to follow a repeating pattern, and struggles to hold itself together amidst increasingly intense musical consequences. This sonata will be presented on my debut album, to be released this year.

Six Morning Miniatures for Piano (2022)

I wrote these little pieces in a series of mornings as a way to start the day. Each briefly explores a little musical world, almost in a naive way.

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On Poetry and the Earth: Two Poems for Actor and String Trio (2022)

I wrote this piece for the Elsewhere Ensemble, a group that combines theater and classical music in new, engaging ways. The ensemble’s core group consists of a trio of fantastic string players alongside Broadway veteran actor MacIntyre Dixon.

When, I all too recently discovered Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen’s ode To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime, I felt drawn into conversation with someone who understood me. Like Cullen, I have long been enamored (or obsessed perhaps) with Keats’ poems and fascinated by the myths surrounding his tragically short life. Cullen’s poem is a series of delicately versified reflections on the beauty of a spring day; in it, he reaches out to Keats as a kindred spirit, one who like him could sense the beauty of nature keenly, even to the point of its driving him into a kind of ecstasy. Setting this poem in a musical piece where it could be spoken rather than sung seemed to me a way of elevating a masterpiece–giving it a richly wrought frame, as it were, one that, like Cullen’s work, embodies many traditional aspects of form and rhetoric, but also stylistically reflects the early 20th century. In accompanying this poem with one of Keats’ own, I mean to present Cullen as I hope he would have wanted himself presented—as a successor to Keats’ poetic tradition. Keats’ sonnet On the Grasshopper and Cricket, also shares themes with Cullen’s poem, and, I hope, creates a vital dialogue with it about the relationship between the beauty we create in art, and the beauty of the earth, these being all part of the same thing.

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Grand Duo for alto saxophone and piano (2019)

I started writing this piece in Paris–something of an homage to the french origin of the saxophone, blending French Romantic and Impressionistic influences, with a hint of fin de siècle Russian music. Like most of my music, the strives to balance formal rigor with broad, lyrical melodies.

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Piano Sonata no. 2 in B minor, “Winter Sonata” (2019)

The “Winter” in this piece is heard in the two outer movements, begun about a year apart during the holidays in snowy New England. The first movement’s slow introduction embodies the cool austerity of winter with sharp clear octaves and dotted rhythms. The ensuing allegro turns these rhythms into something jagged and aggressive until a lilting lyrical theme takes over, evocative of the warmth of home and family. Material from the introduction returns throughout the allegro. The final movement, while more flowing and improvisatory, is based largely based on music from the first movement.

The second movement was written during my summer at home in New England, and it reflects the warm geniality of the place. It is an extended, passionate song, at times echoing the symphonic slow movements of Beethoven and Mahler.

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Sonata e Fantasia for solo flute (2018)

Sonata e fantasia was written at the request of the flautist Linda Jenkins, whose expressive, elegant, and virtuosic playing made this a pleasure to write. In the Classical repertoire, pieces for a single monophonic instrument are quite rare. Although there are some for the quasi-polyphonic violin and cello, there is no precedent for Classical sonata form applied in solo flute repertoire (CPE Bach’s Flute Sonata in a minor actually uses binary form!). This Classical sonata form is the “Sonata” part of the title; the “fantasia” part represents the dominant affect of the piece, especially the character of the beginning, with its freely spun-out arpeggios and melancholy melodic figures. In combining these “sonata” and “fantasia” elements I tried to create a play between freedom and order, expression and balance. Compound melody and registeral shifts suggest multiple contrapuntal voices within the flute’s monophonic line. This, combined with the frequent fast arpeggios, serves to better define the underlying Classical harmony, and shape the overall sonata form.

Sonata e fantasia for solo flute - Full Score

Fantasy Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Ensemble (2017)

This piece is an experiment: can the Classical concerto idiom be realized by a marimba? The instrumentation is likewise eccentric, with alto saxophone and bass clarinet in place of standard Classical winds, and a mixed ensemble of mostly winds instead of a string-predominant orchestra. The novelty of the marimba timbre did inspire a few oddities – for example, the piece modulates to the bVII key area in the exposition – but the overall structure and orchestration employed the paradigms of Mozart’s piano concertos. Though very different, the featured instruments contain a few important similarities. Like the marimba, the piano’s tone is percussive and clear, and both can execute similar runs and arpeggios. Mozart’s Concerto-sonata form guided the structure of the piece, and the piano in the Fantasy Concerto takes the functional place of the string section.

Fantasy Concerto for Marimba