My music tends to provoke strong reactions. Make of this what you will. People tend to find my music either inscrutable, annoying, boring—even off-putting—or subtle, surprising, transporting—even beautiful.

I was fortunate to grow up in a house with a piano. Without prodding, I gravitated toward and began playing the instrument at the age of three. I also frequently pulled the pots and pans out of the cupboards and banged on them with wooden and metal spoons. I didn’t have a concept of the word yet, but I was making music. When, at age six, I learned to read music, I started writing music. Over the next few decades, I pursued a rigorous musical education. I absorbed as much as I could—as a reader, listener, performer, and scholar. For many years I taught music theory and composition at the college level.

I never made a decision to be a composer, it has simply always been something that I do. I sometimes go fairly long stretches without writing anything, but at a certain point, a piece of music more or less insists upon being written. I do not wish to entertain or educate with my music—although, if there is entertainment or education, or other things, I don’t object to this. I only seek to give place to the sounds that come to me in the clearest and most accurate way possible. There is nothing to prove here, and if I wake up tomorrow and never write a piece of music again, that would be acceptable.

I write for traditional instruments to be played by adept musicians. I love the sounds of these instruments, many of which I consider to have reached a state of near perfection. While I do listen to plenty of recordings, my music is intended to be performed live and experienced in person. I recognize that most people who hear my music will be listening to a recording, but this is not the ideal.

I have written enough music over a long enough stretch of time that, naturally, there is some variety to be found. Nevertheless, here are some ways that one might describe my music: it tends to be soft; it tends to be slow; it tends to be patient; it seems to be more about creating an environment in which sounds happen than about narrative or emotion.

Maybe I could say some things that my music is not: it is not tonal; it is not traditional (a better word would be conventional); it is not meant to be understood in relation to other music (it is not in a style); it is not demonstrative or showoff-y; it is not confined by a regular and repetitive sense of time. Perhaps that means, in some sense, that it is free—although that probably depends more on the listener than it does on the composer or the performer.

Of course, there are some exceptions—I’m speaking in generalities here.

I suppose I could talk about the music that has had a major impact upon me, but I’d rather mention a few non-composers who mean as much to me as any composers do (and there are lots of composers who mean a great deal to me). I’m thinking of people like Matsuo Basho, Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko, Yasujirō Ozu, Samuel Beckett, I. M. Pei. 

Better than words—or, at least, more to the point—is the music. I hope you enjoy exploring.