Chorus With Piano

G.M. Hopkins’ poem in which he ask God about the meaning of evil with a quartet of voices singing Latin “answers” layered upon the setting. Reminiscent of Ives’ The Unanswered Question, but for voices. Premiered in 1993 as part of “Epithalamion”; sung by the Newark Boys Choir.

No Worst, There is None
Patience
Carrion Comfort
To Seem the Stranger
My Own Heart
I Wake and Feel the Dark
Premiered as “Epithalamion: A Masque” at Manhattanville College in 1991 with Annabelle Gamson and Arnold Gamson, directors for dance and music. Works are dark, serious, dissonant.

Put the City Up is a setting of part Carl Sandburg’s The Windy City, Section 6. This section of the poem is about the nature of any American city, whether it be Chicago, New York, Los Angeles.
In this work, I tried to capture the energy, work, dreams, play and noise you cannot escape when walking the streets of “the city.”

Mass for women’s voices in English.

From the Latin Mass, “I will go unto the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth….” Written for my brother, John, who loves the words he prayed as an altar boy.

Commissioned by Manhattan Chorale Ensemble, Tom Cunningham, conductor; performed at Columbia University, New York City. Text: portions of psalms and a passage from Micah that speak of peace and forgiveness. In composing this work, I realized that a far more difficult question (and perhaps more deeply personal) than that of asking God to forgive us is “Can we forgive God”?

Psalm setting in a modal, polyphonic texture.