While the piano remains my main instrument for composition, I am familiar with the violin (having taken lessons for 2 years in high school) and the fact that my father was an Irish fiddler and my mother studied piano for 15 years and violin for 7.  While I have written mostly for solo piano or other keyboard instruments (e.g., harpsichord), I continue to explore and produce compositions for strings, organ, harpsichord, orchestra and voice among others.

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My compositional work process includes development of melodies that usually occur in my head (oftentimes at 2 in the morning), or with “noodling at the piano”. Like many composers in the past who “heard melodies in specific keys, I usually “hear melodies” in my head either in the key of F Major or D minor.  I subsequently transpose them to other keys that convey the synesthetic and tonal qualities that I am seeking to fully express in the harmonies and contrapuntal melodies in their development. As may be noted on several of the compositions, the date ranges of many compositions span several months if not a year or more from inception to completion. Like most composers (except Mozart or Haydn) full blown works were developed over varying lengths of time (e.g., Beethoven worked on the first movement of his Fifth Symphony for 13 years before he was satisfied with it). I often work on more than one piece at a time to allow the works to mature like fine wines and cheeses.  Several compositions are still undergoing this “maturation process”: a String Quartet, a Nocturne for piano in B Major, Arioso Lamentoso for Flute and Piano, a set of Chorale Etudes and a set of Variations on Handel’s Sarabande.  Stay tuned for their birth announcements.