Rendezvous With Destiny to be performed at Ballroom of Government House NSW

September 19, 2011
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September – from “Then, gently, the world began anew.”

September 5, 2011

I’ve closed a circle. Back in October 2010, when Steve Robb first broached this calendar project with me, I immediately started writing harp miniatures – without any specific photographs or stories in mind, without knowing if they’d be used. I wrote one piece while on a retreat organized by Amir Zoghi in beautiful Wentworth Falls […]

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Liberty and the pursuit, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (1988/2011)

August 26, 2011

For violin and viola. Excerpt from String Quartet Back in 1988 during my third year at college in Madison, I was discovering Beethoven, string quartets, and American folk music all at the same time. I can trace my love affair with the string quartet back to a precise moment. In spring 1988 I was accepted […]

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Performances at Sydney Chamber Music Festival

August 12, 2011

This year’s Sydney Chamber Music Festival will feature two compositions of mine in two concerts on Sunday 11 September. Firstly, during the afternoon the Acacia string quartet will play Don’t Leave Me This Way once again. This will be the fifth time they’ve performed it, and I can’t express enough what good and rare fortune […]

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August – from “Then, gently, the world began anew.”

August 6, 2011

Someone sits at a piano playing ragtime, wistfully remembering. It’s midwinter. Nostalgia is comforting companion. A fragment of music can cause a cascade of memories, like the waft of a forgotten perfume rushing you with reminiscences of the grandmother you hadn’t thought of in decades. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 little masterpiece The Curious Case […]

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July – from “Then, gently, the world began anew.”

July 10, 2011

“Months grow longer, the days touching.” It’s a story of waiting. Waiting as time stretches and both shadows and hours lengthen. Ulysses surrounds me now. A composer friend of mine is working on an opera about Ulysses and she and I are having a grand time discussing those things that composers like discussing – no, […]

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Concerts this month: “Don’t Leave Me This Way”

July 3, 2011

I’m thrilled to announce that this month, the excellent Acacia Ensemble will give 4 performances at 4 different locations in Sydney of my string quartet Don’t Leave Me This Way. I’m just as thrilled that the concert also features music by my dear friend Elena Kats-Chernin. To share the bill with such a wonderful, inspiring […]

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June – from “Then, gently, the world began anew.”

June 7, 2011

Unlike last month’s music which had no melody, my music for June has an aching, bittersweet tune. Such melodies always sought me out; if I sit too long unoccupied at the piano, they emerge, literally hand-made, from the space between my fingers and the keys. I first discovered my love of these love-soaked, desire-laden tunes […]

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May – from “Then, gently, the world began anew.”

May 3, 2011

This was one of the first photographs that Steve showed me for inclusion in our calendar project “Then, gently, the world began anew”. I wrote two stories for it. The scale of nature, the vastness of sea and threat of sky, emphasized the fragility and flimsiness of a little fishing boat. A valedictory sensation was […]

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“Don’t Leave Me This Way” (from String Quartet)

April 12, 2011

The above image from David McDiarmid’s Rainbow Aphorisms is from the National Gallery of Victoria and used by permission of Sally Gray, the artistic executor of the estate of David McDiarmid. I began the sketches for this section of my String Quartet back sometime in the mid-1990s. On May 29, 1995 I delivered the eulogy […]

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