My personal goal is to bring the populace back to Art music through education. I see my role as a composer and choir director as pivotal to this goal. In terms of tonality, I try to balance the theoretical with the emotive. Music must be intellectually and aurally pleasing for both the academics and for the populace. By stretching tonality for some and returning to it for others, I can most effectively reach my audience to create a meaningful musical experience.

Educating Via the Choir

The church choir is an outlet to bring Art music back into the lives of the populace. As a composer and lover of music, I feel it is my responsibility to bring quality music back to the people and to educate them in the music of our past Century. If I don't, who will?

I write music with a post-modern edge, in order to create not only beautiful melody and harmony, but to take the musical traditions of the past and incorporate them into my own music so that through my music, I can educate the listener in the sound of 20th Century music. This happens gradually, not in a brash way that immediately ostracizes the audience.

I win as a composer by getting music performed and the church wins by having a composer to write music for the service and education in new sounds: a blend of the old and the new, the tonal and the atonal, the modern, and the romantic.

My goal is to have my church choir singing the best music from each time period: Bach, Mozart and other greats from the past as well as contemporary music, by contemporary composers.

Intimate Social Gatherings

I believe that there will be a shift back to the intimate ensemble performances of the 19th Century. The dominance of the orchestra is an invention of the 20th Century, bringing with it elitism and snobbery. Ticket prices have soared to pay for quality musicians, thus, fewer people attend orchestral concerts.

Music can come back into fashion at the informal social gathering. Small gatherings can be accentuated by music; not just by listening to a classical CD, but a mini concert. Music for intimate social gatherings include small ensemble music for a few instruments, such as combinations of piano, voice, flute and harp.

Merging Music and Poetry

Another particular area of interest of mine is poetry. In completing my Bachelor's degree in English, I took almost all of my undergraduate coursework in poetry. I see a beautiful crossover between the disciplines of music and poetry, especially in usage of rhythm.

I decided to take the natural rhythm of the spoken line and incorporating that rhythm into music. Many more opportunities become available when working with poets directly.