Now

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Updated July 6, 2026 from Athens, GA.

This summer has been occupied so far by a trip to the Nief-Norf Summer Festival in Knoxville, TN. My new work, Sphinx of Black Quartz, Judge My Vow was premiered there, and I had the joy of performing several text scores and other experimental works during my time at Nief-Norf. I met some truly inspiring and deeply kind colleagues from all over the continent and enjoyed considering new ideas, perspectives, methodologies, and tools for my compositional practice.

Now that I’m back from Nief-Norf, I’m diving into two projects. First is a transcription of the overture to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor‘s The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30 for piano four-hands for Evanthia Panagou and Jet Chong here at UGA. The second is work on my dissertation document and piece. The document will be an exploration of the aesthetic impact of self-imposed constraints in composition. The piece will be a 50-minute work for piano and electronics reflecting on the past several decades of culture war and their fallout for Queer Christians in the United States.

Part of my work has been exploring a new setup that I’m hoping to use for the dissertation piece – several glass bowls and vessels that I’ve modified with hot-glued wooden standoffs and contact microphones which send audio signals into a Max patch for processing. Each glass vessel it “tuned” to highlight twelve of its resonant frequencies, which are selected at random each time the contact microphone registers a sufficiently large attack. The processed audio from the four vessels can then be spatialized, further processed, or (hopefully!) used to trigger synchronous DMX lighting. (I’m looking into the feasibility of using DMX-controlled LED strip lighting beneath each of the four glass vessels).

Additionally, I just wrapped up my fourth semester at the University of Georgia – this semester featured my DMA recital at the Dancz Center for New Music as well as some recording projects, some work on new installation pieces, and a number of other performances at UGA and in North Carolina. Last but not least, I passed my comprehensive exams!

One of the most surprising parts of the semester was working with my colleagues Joey Miller and Richie Arndorfer to pull off Negative Space – a live-coding set that we put together in SuperCollider and shared in the Dancz Center blackbox. This 45-minute soundscape was very loosely structured and the result was a really lovely and truly improvisatory bit of computer music created live for the audience. I’m looking forward to future opportunities to develop my live-coding skills!

I am continuing to work on a set of short character pieces for solo piano inspired by my friends, called Album Amicorum. I premiered the first set of four movements (Book I) during my first year at UGA and premiered two more this past semester at my DMA recital. I had the joy of playing Book I again at the SCI Region IV conference Boone, NC and at Nief-Norf this summer.

I am continuing some experiments with creating generative music using PureData (Pd), Max, and recorded sounds. My first foray into this area was Send Light, Room I – a piece for generative 4-channel sound and accompanying real-time visualization which sets various prayers, poems, and texts from the historic Christian tradition. Last semester, I worked on a sort of sequel piece (Send Light, Room II) which reflected on the themes and atmosphere of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, engaging grief, love, existentialism, and the terror of the sublime. (see below).

Send Light, Room II became my first experiment with the use of custom Arduino microcontrollers as well as my first use of interactive DMX lighting controls in live performance.

Previous Entries

  • During the Fall of 2025 I wrote Waymarks for soprano, double bass, and ambisonics, which set a portion of Rev. Dr. Bernhard Erling’s translation of Hammarskjöld’s Swedish text. The piece was given a reading by LIGAMENT and was then recorded by my amazing colleagues Avery Britt and Wueliton Zanelatto Dal Pont. We also recorded my colleague Richie Arndorfer’s amazing Come To (Hither Now, O Muses) which has Avery using some awesome techniques on with a megaphone!
  • During the Summer of 2025, I traveled to Italy to participate in the highSCORE Festival just outside of Venice. I premiered a piece for piano trio entitled Visible Mending, and I had a joy connecting with my colleagues there.
  • I am currently reading Roger Lipsey’s biography of Dag Hammarskjöld and enjoying learning more about his life after reading through Markings two years ago.
  • During the summer of 2024, I tremendously enjoyed diving into Simon Critchley’s book, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. I’ve been energized by its implications for understanding the humanities, faith & queerness, and progressive/conservative disagreements.
  • Since Fall of 2023, I’ve been experimenting with the new experimental Blockhead DAW for use in my work, and I’ve having a fantastic time. I’d encourage any composer or music maker to take a look and support its development.
  • I’ve been continuing to enjoy the poetry of H.D. and Kevin Young’s poetry collection, Book of Hours. More recently, I’ve been diving into The Essential W.S. Merwin and have greatly enjoyed Matthew Olzmann’s Constellation Route. I read Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves for several months over the summer of 2023 and have enjoyed learning more about ergodic literature and open forms in music.