ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a composer-pianist. As I grow older I find that a diversity of aesthetics inspire my ever evolving interests. I am a pluralist, a practicing composer, but also a classical pianist, a jazz player and a free improvisor. I often perform concert improvisations in different idioms and I feel comfortable mixing materials and idioms in my compositions. I am particularly drawn to the use of American and world music materials. My composition work flows naturally out of my performance work. For several years I was something of an avant-gardist, but I find myself working more carefully, more slowly, perhaps even more traditionally these days.
Modality, polytonality and even chromatically altered tonality have become attractive to me again. The expressive use of traditional developmental forms have come to interest me also. I am studying Debussy, Bartok and Stravinsky again with much admiration and yet I also find inspiration in everything from “Jelly Roll” Morton, Ellington, classic bebop, world musics and folk song recordings to Beethoven and Pucinni and Takemitsu and Ligeti.
If any thread pulls all of the above together, it is simply a desire to recapture the truth of great music in terms of the contemporary. I always aim to create unique work, but also something useful and effective in concert performance. I hope to write intelligently and idiomatically, to compose music that is profoundly expressive, but at the same time focused and immediate.
It seems to me that the arts are paradoxical. Over time the artist develops a technique and a discipline. Then, throwing caution and objectivity to the wind, he must humbly aspire to move beyond that, even beyond the self. Through the creation of things intensely subjective, the artist may approach an expression of the universal. This has fascinated me since I was a boy. I have dedicated my life to the study and practice of music as art. I believe it is extremely important work. Music is magical. It brings together the complete person, the physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual person. I now aspire to do what it seems I was born to do, to create a fine, personal, enduring art music.
I care about my audience. I very much want to connect with them in a direct way. I want to pass on our universal musical heritage(s) through the creation of worthy new work. The quest is spiritual, after all is said and done. I think of myself now as (finally) mature. I have greater resources, a finer technique. I feel I have entered a golden time. I am now prepared to do my best work and I intend to do it.