About the Composer
I first experienced the physical power of music when, as a little boy,
my parents took me to an outdoor concert at Wolf Trap. The explosion
from Beethoven's kettle drums knocked me off my parents' blanket and
onto the grass. I covered a lot of ground in that short distance because
from that point forward I was aware of music as a force unto itself. I had
gone through a passageway and come out a different person.
Classical training in composition with Leo Edwards at the
Mannes College
of Music in New York City and private jazz studies with Eric Goletz and
other artists are the foundation upon which my compositions are built.
About the Music
The compositions on the Cd are "aural dramas" about the forces that create
passageways and the beings that move through them.
White Russian: soldiers rush through a break in the line and press the advantage.
Rip Tide: churning beneath the water's surface, cross currents drive a swimmer
farther and farther from shore.
Henry VIII: a prideful and paranoid king follows the threads of real or imagined
subversive plots.
Passageways: an ill parent ebbs away, forcing adulthood on the child.
Black Bear Walking: an innocent and playful bear meanders through his territory.
Serious Child: a child toddles down a hallway to investigate something.
Battle Cry of Freedom: an exhausted Union army slogs through the muddy backwoods
of the South.