Composer
Composed for the Central Michigan University New Music Ensemble, both movements are typical of my current compositional output. Harmonies are based on the repetition of a simple interval pattern and long lyrical melodies weave their way through these chaconnes. The rhythms and colors are rather plain, unadorned, and far from ornate. The directness and simplicity …
This composition is a single movement that continually spins out from the opening spiky punctuations. The entire quartet has an organic sense of growth as it takes different motives from the beginning and winds through various incarnations of that material. This material is reinterpreted, recombined, twisted, stretched, and generally toyed with until everything coalesces again …
This composition is about a blocked melody. A simple lyrical line is trapped within clouds of shattered fragments and textures. As the composition unfolds, the disintegrated fragments which encumber the melodic line begin to fall away until only the melody remains. The title is, as you probably know, a quotation of Darth Vader’s instructions to …