THE NYMPHS ARE DEPARTED (2006) voice and piano.
Written for Mary Nessinger and Jeanne Golan as part of a project where various composers respond to specific songs from cycles of Berg and Debussy. Premiered at the National Arts Club, New York City, November, 2006. The text is an excerpt from Fire Sermon from Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Written as a response to Debussy's Death of the Niaads.

BROKEN MINUETS (2006) harp and string orchestra.
Commissioned by harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet. Premiered by Oriol Ensemble, with Langlamet soloist, at the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin, October, 2006. In this piece very short fragments of "minuet-like" music are used to establish a norm for which to gauge the ensuing passages that spin out into a generally more mysterious, ambiguous, and ethereal sound world. It is in five movements.

PIANO CONCERTO (2006) piano and chamber orchestra.
Commissioned by Miller Theatre for it's Pocket Concerto series. Premiered in April 2007 at Miller Theatre, Emma Tahmizian, piano soloist. The piece is in 3 movements. The last movement employs prerecorded sounds samples which recapitulate etherealized fragments of music from the first movement.

REMIX (2005) mixed ensemble, electronics.
Written for players from the Berlin Philharmonic and premiered in the Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie in Berlin, October 2005. An extended antiphon divided into two alternating instrumental groups: a horn trio (vln. hn. pn.) and all the remaining instruments and electronic samples. The first group presents material, while the second follows with a ghostly echo.

CROSSFADE (2005) two harps.
Commissioned by Marie-Pierre Langlamet. Premiered at the Philharmonie (Kammermusiksaal), in Berlin, October 2005. The piece is based on a series of wave-like gestures that grow from nothing, come into prominence, and then slowly fade, which alternate between the two harp parts.

NIGHTMAZE (2005) chamber ensemble, narrator, video, electronics.
Commissioned by the Network for New Music with funding from the Barlow Foundation and premiered in Philadelphia by Network for New Music in May, 2005. Based on a text of writer Thomas Bolt, A sleep-deprived college student falls into a deep sleep and—his mind saturated with half-understood ideas—dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway on which he is the only driver and where strange roadsigns loom up.

QUIET TIME (2004) string quartet.
Written for the Cassatt Quartet to complement an early string quartet also written for them, Quartetset on a recording by New World Records. The work maintains loose parallels to the earlier piece and is also in seven movements. They are marked antiphon, time's arrow, reverberation, two chords interrupted by a scherzo, time flow, memory filter, traces.

AERIALISM (2004) cello and piano.
Commissioned by the Circle of Friends of Anne-Sophie Mutter and written for cellist Daniel Muller-Schott. The piece is in five movements and utilizes the expressive and precarious sound qualities of the uppermost register of the cello.

STATIC (2003) fl. cl. vln. vcl. pno.
Commissioned by Meet the Composer for Music from Copland House, it was premiered at Miller Theatre in New York, February, 2005. The piece traces two divergent meanings of the word "static" - one a state of equilibrium, the other an erratic white noise that interferes with radio signals - in a six movement cycle reminiscent of a sonata cycle. The movements are marked remote, ethereal, bipolar, resonant, charged, and floating.

NIGHT MASS (2003) chorus and orchestra.
Commissioned by Eos Orchestra and the Institute of American Music. Premiered by Eos Orchestra and the Voices of Ascension Chorus in New York, May, 2003. The Latin mass intersects with ideas from modern science. The piece follows the ordinary sequence of movements in a mass except that the Credo is replaced by a new text written by Thomas Bolt. The movement is entitled “Incertum,” which means “uncertainty."

PULSE (2002) viola and guitar.
Commissioned by the Harvard Music Association and premiered by Eliot Fisk and Kim Kashkashian in Boston, January, 2003. The piece is in one extended movement.

LINKS (2001) solo violin.
Commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter for a violin competition that she planned to resurrect (Carl Flesch), but which never materialized. The piece is a series of variations where the ordering is left up to the player.

BOOK OF HOURS (2002) violin solo, orchestra, electronics.
Commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter this piece was written specifically for CD as opposed to live performance. It employs a diverse group of instruments, including voice, electronics and a santoor. It is in eighteen movements and represents a modern science and technology based recasting of a medieval book of hours.

VARIATIONS ON “TIME AND TIME AGAIN” (2000) flute and piano.
Commissioned by the National Flute Association. Recorded by Music from Copland House with Paul Dunkel, flute and Michael Boriskin, piano. A series of variations where the theme, a jazz ballad of sorts, emerges at the end of the piece, rather than at the beginning and thus reversing the normal flow of variation form.

COLOR WHEEL (1999) piano 14 minutes.
Written for pianist Emma Tahmiziàn. Premiered at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in April 1999. Color Wheel begins with a series of thirty six isolated chords. The wheel revolves around musical space. As the wheel turns, its momentum increases, one notch at a time. When it moves fast enough, it changes into something else: a fast whirling fugue, where the emphasis is no longer on the color of individual chords but on the movement of several entangled lines.

NIGHT TIME (1998)vln. hp. 12 minutes.
Written for harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet. Premiered at the Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie, Berlin in May, 2000. Night Time is in five short movements which portray various aspects of night. The movements are: Dusk, Sleepless, Vespers, Nightwind, and Starlight.

FRAMES (1998) vcl. pn. 23 minutes.
Written for cellist John Whitfield. Commissioned by the Fromm Foundation. Premiered at Merkin Hall in October 1997. At the heart of Frames are two classically conceived movements: one fast punchy, driven, extroverted and bold; the other slow, lyrical, flexible, introverted and expressive.

VERGE (1997) vln. cl. pn. 13 minutes.
Written for and commissioned by the Verdehr Trio. Premiered at the Phillips Collection in March 1999. Verge is composed of nine short movements: almost too fast, almost too slow, almost too mechanical, almost too dark, almost too light, almost too fragmented, almost too much, almost too little, almost too calm.

MICROSYMPH (1997) orchestra 10 minutes.
Written for and commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. Premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1997. Microsymph is a large-scale five movement symphony that has been squeezed into only ten minutes. The result is a frantically paced, restless, quick-changing kaleidoscope of five highly compressed movements which are built from a whirl of diverse materials into an eclectic amalgam of ceaselessly changing sounds, colors, and ideas.

CHAMBER CONCERTO (1996) violin and string orchestra 33 minutes.
Written for violinist Lewis Kaplan. Premiered at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival in July, 1997. The work is in three movements: relentless, dark and light, forceful.

BROKEN CONSORT (1996) fl. ob. vln. vcl. 2gtrs. 14 minutes.
Written for the Cygnus Ensemble. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation. A one movement piece which moves from a mechanical ordered state to one of uncontrolled chaos and back to order again, but with a lyrical element that was absent in the beginning.

WHISPERS (1996) fl. vcl. pn. perc. 13 minutes.
Written for Mosaic Ensemble. Whispers is the musical equivalent of tones of voice. Quick accented whispers dominate the central section, Repressed Intensity, which has the performers playing with great vitality, but pianissimo. A generally reposeful quietude frames this sense of repressed urgency. Recorded on New World Records.

SCARLATTI CADENCES (1997) piano 5 minutes.
Written for pianist Emma Tahmiziàn. A small scale work for piano which pays homage to the works of Domenico Scarlatti.

QUARTET SET (1995) string quartet 45 minutes.
Written for the Cassatt Quartet. Made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Premiered at Merkin Hall on the Zoom series in September, 1995. In seven movements of varying lengths. May be performed in whole or part. A post-modern interpretation of the string quartet, this work juxtaposes materials that are in stark contrast to one another.

THEO'S SKETCHBOOK (1992) piano 30 minutes.
Written for pianist Emma Tahmiziàn. Premiered at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in April 1994. This work traces the life's work of an imaginary composer, Theo, from early juvenalia, to the last work he wrote, a lullaby for his granddaughter. The 13 short movements trace his interests in temporality, formalism and the music of Eskimo cultures. It is recorded on New World Records.

BRAINSTORM (1994) piano 4 minutes.
Written for pianist John Kamitsuka and dedicated to Ambassador Bartholomew (US Ambassador to Italy). Premiered at the American Academy of Rome in June, 1994. A short, frenetic work for solo piano.

AFTERSONG (1993) violin and piano 14 minutes.
Written for and commissioned by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Premiered in Schleswig-Holstein in July 1994. In two movements played without pause, the first relentlessly active, the second distant and calm. After an excited dance a quiet song.

VOCALISSIMUS (1991) sop. fl. cl. vln. vcl. pn. perc. 32 Minutes.
Commissioned by the Barlow Foundation. Premiered at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival in July 1991. This work consists of 18 songs, each a different setting of the same short Wallace Stevens poem. Each setting is from a contrasting viewpoint . Some are as follows: recluse, formalist, optimist, pessimist, mystic, lunatic, etc. It is recorded on New World Records.

ENTANGLEMENT (1992) violin and piano 26 minutes.
Written for violinist Maria Bachmann. Commissioned by Mary Flagler Cary Trust Foundation. Imagine that two composers had the same idea for a piece. Add to that that they have totally opposing personalities and you have the premise for this 7 movement work. It strings together two versions of the same sonata, one dionysian the other apollonian.

CLOCKWORK (1989) violin and piano 18 minutes.
Written for violinist Lewis Kaplan. The three basic movements of this piece are linked by an eerie clock-like music. The sections are: lifeless - turbulent - lifeless - searching - lifeless - restless - lifeless.

INTIMATIONS (1989) clarinet and piano 12 minutes.
First performed on a concert of the New York Guild of Composers in February 1989. A one movement work where ideas are hinted at before they are stated outright. The title also refers to the inward, personal nature of the work as a whole. The sections are: Whispered, Fragmentary - Whirling, at Times Frenzied - Remote. It is recorded by clarinetist Nathan Williams on Albany Records.

UNCERTAINTIES (1993) viola and piano 17 minutes.
Written for violist Misha Amory. First performed at Alice Tully Hall on Mr Amory's Naumburg Award Concert. The piece consists of two sharply drawn and polarized musical ideas. Each interrupts the other and the connections are always abrupt and sharp-edged. The piece is dedicated to the memory of composer Stephen Albert.

TIME'S HAND (1990) orchestra 20 minutes.
First performed at Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra. The musical process in Time's Hand is about change, where one order is always in the process of disintegration while at the same time a new order is emerging.

ASSERTIONS/REFLECTIONS (1988) guitar 12 minutes.
Written for and commissioned by guitarist William Matthews. The work is in three movements, the outer ones forceful, the central one contemplative.

PIANO SONATA (1988) piano 24 minutes.
Written for pianist Emma Tahmiziàn. Premiered Merkin Concert Hall in March 1989. The five movements are: Bold and Defiant, Fragile (with outbursts), Anxious, Suppressed, and Multifarious.

STRING QUARTET NO. 2 (1987) string quartet 18 minutes.
First performed at the Tanglewood Music Center by the Shang Hi Quartet. The work is in three movements

PARTITA (1986) piano 17 minutes.
Performed by pianist Michael Boriskin at the Sacramento Festival for New Music. Comprised of seven short movements.

FROM A BOOK OF SOMBRE PAGES (1985) concert band 12 minutes.
In one movement. The title is taken from a line of a Wallace Stevens poem, The Reader.

Composition List Download (.doc format )