viola

Composer's note:  Under the Weather portrays in musical and more literal terms water in motion. Isolated drips, impending storm, distant rumbles, crashing thunder and lightning, eventual calm sunlight and rolling surf are all implied by the music and the electronic sounds, most of which are unaltered from their obvious sources. Under the Weather was written for my wife Cindy, whose storms always end in sunshine, and my colleague and friend, Bill Peterson, whose "Storm Fantasies for the Nineteenth-Century Organ in France," appeared in Keyboard Perspectives, volume II (2009).

Composer's note:  Tathata for string trio was composed during the summer of 2007. It was written for and is dedicated to the Athabasca String Trio who premiered it in October of 2007 at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York. The title, from the Pali language, means suchness -- a way of experiencing reality without the barrier of language and concepts.

In one movement of about eleven minutes, Tathata, falls into three large sections, the first beginning with a viola solo accompanied by a tolling A in the violin and cello. This soon grows into three-part counterpoint, but the idea of repeated notes proves to be ubiquitous throughout much of the piece. The middle section, marked Tranquillo, features a long melody in the violin. Near it's end, the music moves to its highest register to lead into the final section marked Con Moto. Featuring the most varied, continuous, and dramatic music of the piece, this section builds inexorably, finally leading to a version of the viola's opening tune, now played in three part unison. The final measures of the piece, again featuring the repeated A, now over a sustained F# in the violin, quietly dissolve into silence.

Composer's note:  Pas de Deux, written for and dedicated to Tawnya Popoff and Carolyn Stinson, is about the interaction of three distinct and continually developing musical characters. The character that gets the least stage time during the piece, consisting of soft furtive legato gestures in the mid-low register, begins and, rather suddenly, ends the piece.