Solo Works

Snapshots was composed between 2000 and 2005. I was asked to write a set of character pieces for the piano. Searching for a unifying theme, I gravitated to the most obvious and basic fact about the piano – its division into white notes and black notes. Thus was born a set of pieces in which each in some way pits the white notes of the piano against the black notes. Originally composed in three distinct sets, the Snapshots were combined into a larger whole in 2009 as the result of a recording project with the pianist Markus Pawlik. The set may be performed as a whole, or subsets of the Snapshots may be performed at the pianist’s discretion. Two of the original sets were composed as the result of commissions from the Virginia Music Teachers’ Association (2000, numbers IV, V, VII, X, XI, XIV, XVI, XVIII, XIX) and California Music Teachers’ Association (2005, numbers VI, VIII, XII, XIII, XV, XVII, XX, XI, XII), and they were composed to address a range of styles and technical challenges. The middle set was composed for the high school level of the Renee B. Fisher Competition (2003, numbers I, II, III, and IX) and explores a range of technical and musical challenges at a higher level.

Seven Last Words was composed during the summer of 2000. It was commissioned by the German violinist Peter Stein to accompany a display of a series of paintings by his father, Rolf Stein. The work is cast as a series of seven short movements, each of which evokes the spirit of the corresponding painting. However, the compositional structure encompasses the complete set, with thematic and structural echoes weaving the seven movements into an organic whole. The most obvious of these connections is the return of material from the second movement at the end of the seventh–the suggestion of paradise now realized. The premiere was given on April 1, 2001, in Holzhausen, Germany.

Rhapsody was composed during the winter of 1997, while I was a Fulbright Fellow in Finland. It was written for, and in consultation with, cellist Audrey Mei who first performed it in a Finnish radio broadcast in May 1997. It is cast in a single movement and is a study of the progression of ideas, a concern with which I was obsessed at the time. At the same time, it explores the virtuosic and idiomatic possibilities of the violoncello. In fact, the very materials were derived from the instrument. I also took advantage of the special colors at which the violoncello excels, especially pizzicato, harmonics, multiple stops, and extreme registers.

Piano Sonata No. 1 was composed between August and November, 1995, and was first performed by pianist Martha McCarroll in Austin, TX, on November 13 of that year. This virtuosic work is cast in five short movements that explore the technical and coloristic possibilities of the instrument. Homage is paid to many earlier composers for the piano, including Brahms, Chopin, Scriabin, Ravel, Schumann, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich. The first movement contrasts an assertive first theme with a more wistful second theme before launching into a telescoped development and recapitulation. It leads without pause into the second movement, a brooding fugue. The third movement elides with the return of the opening material of the second movement, its delicate, quicksilver character contrasting with the heavy, plodding mood of the second movement. Further contrast is offered in the fourth movement, a mystical meditation on trill-like figures in the upper register of the piano. Occasional brash interjections interrupt this otherwise tranquil movement. The fifth and final movement begins explosively in the lowest register of the piano. It quickly loses momentum then gradually builds throughout the rest of the movement to finally attain and surpass this initial energy in its bravura coda.