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Metal House was composed for a metal instrument/sculpture that Andrea Moore had created and commissioned for another piece, Anvil Chorus. Percussion instruments are often only used for one piece – and sometimes just one performance. For this piece, percussionist Andrea Moore introduced this metal instrument/sculpture to me and asked me to write specifically for it. I used the sculpture as a basis for this new work, and added additional metal parts. In this way, I treated the sculpture more like a violin, piano or clarinet, adding new repertoire for the specific sculpture/instrument. The piece was written in four sections: A-B-C-D. The sections may be played by the performer in any sequence of his/her choosing. In some cases the tempi are set; in others, the performer is given license to choose their own tempo.

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At the World Festival of Sacred Music, I was honored to play with Prince Diabate once again. For this concert, I premiered with the balafon on three songs. (Footage can be seen on Youtube – Diabate at the Madrid Theater). The ensemble for this concert was Prince Diabate on Cora and Ngoni and lead vocals, Linda Albertano on Balafon and myself on vocals, Fulani flute, Western flute, balafon, segue-segue, and la-la.

Running the Sahara session with Prince Diabate and composer, Hector Pereira (2007) Click image to enlarge

Living in Los Angeles, I sometimes find my work informed by the film industry’s techniques. One of two works I premiered in the summer of 2007, “Surface”, for two percussionists performing in Foley boxes, transfers what’s usually a recorded experience to the immediacy of the stage. I designed two portable Foley pits, each containing sound surfaces such as grass, dirt, leaves or snow. The score’s rhythms, inspired by my study of Son Jarocho and flamenco foot rhythms, were articulated by the percussionists with their feet.

The second piece premiered in the summer of 2007, “Unfolding”, is for five vocalists. This primarily a cappella set of vocal poems presents a new set of words for each phrase, thus embodying an unfolding process by which contextual meaning gradually shifts and changes. This piece premiered with “Surface” at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA.

The breadth of my interests has led me into many fruitful collaborative projects. I was a sound designer for video artist Bill Viola’s “Ocean Without a Shore”, which premiered at the Venice Biennale this past summer.  I also completed the sound for Sharon Lockhart’s latest film “Pineflat” which premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival in Winter 2006 and internationally at Sala Rekalde, Bilbao Spain in December 2005.  For “Pineflat” I recorded, edited, and designed all of the sound and music from production to post-production. The sound was recorded outside in the Sierra Mountains on location.

As I mentioned above, for several years, I have been performing with Prince Diabate, a Griot and a master Cora player from Guinea, Africa. In 2006, I had the opportunity to travel with him to Guinea, where I was privileged to study with Griot masters and other masters of the region.   I studied traditional Fulani flute and Malenke flute, and traditional percussion instruments, including the Krin, Gongoman, La-la and segue-segue. This period of study culminated in a new recording by Prince Diabate, “Djerelon”, on which I played flute.

The training in Guinea continues to inform my performances with Prince Diabate, as well as other aspects of my work. In 2007, I performed traditional Fulani flute on the documentary “Running the Sahara”, scheduled to be released in October 2007.

I am always looking for sound sources, or the potential for a translation into sound, both in and out of the musical community. To that end, I am always interested in collaborating with people working outside of music, and in 2004 undertook a collaboration with oceanographer and researcher, John Helly.  I worked with John Helly on the creation of oceanographic maps and data collection for buoys off of the Southern California coast. The graphs that resulted from this process, charting wave swells, became a source for musical composition.

• Click here to listen to Ocean Wave Swell Heights

In 2001, the Swiss curator, Moritz Kung, commissioned a work from me for the “The Lost Past” exhibition, which premiered June 15, 2002, and concluded on September 15, 2002. The subject of this group exhibition was “collective memory”. The specific reference for my commission was the traditional bugle fanfare played by firemen under the Menin Gate every evening since 1928, in remembrance of those who died in the Great War.  The resulting piece, “Calls”, was partially based on borrowed phrases from the  “Last Post” music. I also recorded birdcalls over the span of an hour at dawn at the Los Angeles Arboretum on a special four-headed microphone.   After editing the birdcalls into repeatable and identifiable melodies, I transcribed the melodies and rhythms and arranged the piece for four trumpets.

In the finished work, a quartet of trumpets begins the Fanfare variation and slowly introduces the birdcall melodies. Eventually, the trumpets begin to mimic the birdcalls, and the fanfare subtly weaves in and out of the bird/trumpet melodies. The piece played every hour and half hour in a rococo museum in Ieper, Belgium during the exhibition period, and the audience and the ringing of the town’s church bells played an important role as incidental sound within the piece. The exhibit was sponsored by Anno ’02 in cooperation with Stedelijke Musea Ieper and was well received in Europe .In 2003, “Calls” had its first live performance premiere at the RedCat opening Gala, with the Los Angeles Trumpet quartet.

In 2003, I collaborated with artist, Jennifer Hill, in creating sound and installation works using the shapes of city skylines as a compositional element.  One of these pieces, “LA Skyline” was premiered at the American Composer’s Forum, Los Angeles Chapter’s “Twelfth Composer’s Salon”, May 18, 2003.

Teatro Amazonas
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• Click here to listen to Teatro Amazonas

• Click here to listen to Time is a Dream

• Click here to listen to El Jardin Del Amor

In 1999, I was commissioned to write the film score for “Teatro Amazonas”, by Sharon Lockhart. The film was a live filming of the choir concert and therefore the premiere of the piece.   The entire sound track focuses on the music and incidental sound that is heard through the film.  The concert premiered at the baroque opera house, Teatro Amazonas, in Manaus, Brazil. I worked directly with a 60 person choir from Manaus, the Choral Do Amazonas, and based the score on a three-dimensional cone’s mathematical formulas, transposed into musical parameters over 24 minutes. Recorded live the day of the shoot with the choir, I began the piece with a large chord cluster of all 60 voices at the start of the film. Slowly and imperceptibly, the clustered voices progress to a single note over the period of 24 minutes.  As the music decays, it slowly fuses into the incidental sounds made by the audience.  This sound transference from composed intentional sound cluster to discrete and accidental sounds of an audience, articulates the filmmaker’s intended cultural exchange. The film premiered at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam and continues to show at international museums, film Festivals. It is distributed by the Arsenal in Berlin.

The above experiences have also led to other exciting ideas and opportunities.  While working with the Choral Do Amazonas, I was introduced to the score and performance “O Meio do Ceio”, a vocal piece from the Amazon region written in three different tribal languages. Inspired, I brought the score and recording back to the United States and started the World Music Choir at the Sangeet School of World Music and Dance in Highland Park, Los Angeles.  Over the next two years, I directed, conducted, composed and transcribed the repertoire for the choir.  We performed works from Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Bulgaria, the Canary Islands as well as in and around Los Angeles.