Hello people,

I noticed that this website is actually starting to attract people and I figured that you might as well have something new to look forward to other than a new piece every once in a forever, so I made this blog… I’ll be honest I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, there’s a reason I write notes instead of words. I guess I just talk about myself here and what I’m doing?

I’ll just talk about what I’m writing.

So, first off, you are looking at the winner of the 2014 Allen Kluge Young Composers Competition! That means that the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra will be premiering my work, O Great Mystery, on September 27. The piece is a short, 7 minute work, which quotes O Magnum Mysterium by Tomas Luis de Victoria, a beautiful piece from the mid Renaissance. The piece deals with the mysticism of the old and romance of new ideas. The beginning reminds me of a cathedral, with 500 year old monks chanting an absurdly high bassoon solo. The piece transforms into new themes, getting more romanticized and expressive, until they are used in counterpoint to one another, where the romantic theme is taken through a canon of different tempi, and eventually all theme are played together in a cacophony until the piece unifies with the same chant as the beginning. The ending is a confused state between modes, until it decides to land on a C minor chord and picardy its way onto C major.

Also on the program is Milhaud’s La Creatone du Monde and Rachmaninoff Symphony no. 2. I was worried no one would remember my piece after those two (heck, I probably won’t) but then I realized that the second option for a date they gave me was their performance of Beethoven 9…. My music is not worthy to be mentioned in the same same sentence as that piece, much less performed next to.

I guess it’s also worth mentioning that I will be spending the summer in Lebanon! Away from here…and the grid. So don’t expect another blog post for a while (probably should’ve waiting until i got back…)

So, I’ll see if I can leave you with a funny story,

the England Soccer team

ok, that’ll do! See you later this summer!