In my musical life I have found nothing like singing.  In Quincy, Illinois, I sang in concert choirs, madrigals, show choir, performed in musicals, and went caroling door to door.  Under the baton of Dean William Olson of the Men’s Glee Club at the University of Illinois I learned the graceful art of following the conductor’s every motion to make the most of each phrase.  With my a cappella group the Xtension Chords I expanded the universe of sounds that voices could join with others to make.  

During my study abroad in Russia I joined the St. Petersburg University Choir, and learned the art of Russian bass singing.  While in the Republic of Georgia I became immersed in Georgian folk and church music traditions, and joined a local folk chorus.  I sang with the Choral Arts Society of Washington for eight years, performing regularly at the Kennedy Center, accompanying the National Symphony and other major orchestras to sing the classics and also Glass, Barber, Adams.  I sing now with the Arlington Chorale, a community chorus where I began to learn Whitacre, Lauridsen, Gjeilo.

I started composing music at age 30 starting with piano pieces and simple songs.  During the pandemic I took to choral composing and I chose as my first text a book by my friend Ben Hale about environmental ethics.  His book begins with a wonderful story about the discovery of dinosaurs dramatically changing our view of the world and our place in it.  I sat at the piano with his book on the music rack, and began to set the highlighted passages to music on my computer.  I worked nonstop and completed the piece in five days.  After that I was hooked on choral composition. 

I have continued to draw on contemporary prose and poetry as well as occasional older texts. I seek out texts with universal themes of joy, beauty, inspiration, grief and healing. My arrangements place the text at the forefront of the music rather than bury the text in the broader musical tapestry.  My pieces move with the rhythm of the story to make the music accessible.  

My pieces are mainly accompanied rather than a cappella, and they are occasionally technically challenging but are not physically demanding.  They rely greatly on conductors to enjoin the choirs to sing, and I hope that conductors enjoy this process of developing and sharing my work.