COMPOSITIONS

The Beautiful

Studio 300 2025, Lexington

"The Beautiful" is a piece about the current cultural decay and collapse of the idealistic image of America. The piece is inspired by the rise in authoritarianism and growing popularity of fascistic ideologies. The titular phrase "America the Beautiful" spoken by a machine. I have always been an avid fan of technology but I find the downsides of it to be particularly troubling as of late. The addiction to technology is overwhelming our brains and our society. Leaving us vulnerable to the propaganda of the tech oligarch.

Precursor

eVIS media Germany 2025

"Precursor" represents the anxiety and tension one feels before something terrible occurs. The freeze, when the existentially dreadful is inevitable. With no other option but to watch and wait.

Romero Manor

This piece is about being in a home with one less person that it should have. From the moments of overwhelming grief, to an almost painful stillness.

I Wish to Make A Sound

"I Wish to Make a Sound" is a part of a larger project I have started recently called _Speech. I have always enjoyed singing and used to take voice lessons but struggled with singing and even talking, due to muscle tension dysphonia. _Speech started as a way to circumvent this problem and be able to be the "lead singer" in my music. I was doing my weird little vocal function exercises for speech therapy around Christmas and thought "this sounds like a weird chant, I should record that!" "I Wish to Make a Sound" is about the yearning for a voice that works. It can be rather sad, rather anxious, and sometimes hopefully a little beautiful. As the voice shows glimmers of what it could be.

Vocal Fold

VU Symposium 2023

"Vocal Fold" is another piece exploring my current interest in voice, technology and gender. All the sounds were initially my own voice. The piece was inspired by my speech therapy and the vocal function exercises that I practice for muscle tension dysphonia. The source material for the video is of my own tired larynx. While the sound space is rather surreal and blending between worlds, the overall arch is the transformation from organic to digital but the process isn’t entirely linear.

Amidst the Trees

"Amidst The Trees" (2022-23) is a piece that grapples with my existential dread surrounding climate change. The sonic worlds and experiments in this piece attempt to mirror the sound sources themselves of nature and humanity’s pollution of our world. Opening with the winds and crinkling of branches high atop the trees, the scene becomes upset by the presence of human made materials. In this case, the main disturbance is trash: a glass bottle and a store receipt. Then, the sounds of the animals, and even the forest itself, scream out in uproarious response.

Sticking Your Head in the Rabbit Hole

PMF Festival Indiana 2023

"Sticking Your Head in the Rabbit Hole" - Is based on a mixture of both usages of the term "rabbit hole". The one from "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland", the rabbit hole being a portal into a surreal and fantastical world. As well as the modern internet metaphor usage, when one finds themselves lost in a subject. Sticking Your Head in the Rabbit Hole stems from a dark place, where one finds their thoughts chasing them into a corner and themselves trapped on the path of the inevitable. Some thoughts are better left unexplored, some rabbit holes are better left alone.

Never Know Better Off That Way

This piece helped me remember how much I loved singing and helped me find an avenue to express it. My sense of exposure when singing and the emotional rawness of the lyrics led me to explore trying to hide under noise. Another part of my desire to hide my voice was due to suffering from muscle tension dysphonia. This song is about childhood, family and whether or not we truly know the ones we love.

Appalachian Tragedy

2024 Appalachian Symposium

This piece began with an interest in connecting to my past and culture as a queer Appalachian person. I grew up in the foothills of south eastern Ohio, while I enjoyed many parts of my rural life it also left a lot of trauma and repression that took significant time to undo. I found myself dropping that side of who I was, and distancing myself from where I came from. My family gifting me a mountain dulcimer made by my late grandmother inspired me to start trying and deal with this musically. This piece is about self discovery and exploring the seemingly contrasting sides of myself and embracing who I am and where I’m from and hoping for a better future.

ReCycle~

Commissioned by the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra for Symphonic Stroll 2024

ReCycle~ is about human ecology. The balance between technology and nature. As a species, we have an unprecedented capability to rise above nature, to augment it, and to overcome some of its inherent suffering. Through our hubris, we also degrade and pollute our world in our constant search for innovation and growth. I often find myself in despair over our collective carelessness. When I find myself in these lows, I try to remind myself that though we can never go back, the world will always change and move on with or without us. ReCycle~ takes sounds of rubber, plastic, and FM synthesis to create something more out of our waste. The piece uses guided randomization to evolve endlessly while staying in the same sonic areas. Pre-programmed sounds, patterns, and harmonies are constantly shifting and recombining through four sections that cycle around every five minutes. Sensors incorporate environmental data like air pressure, light, and temperature to control macro parameters such as overall tempo and density. The piece gradually moves towards more intense sonorities and inharmonic textures before returning to more traditional and calming sounds. Showcasing that life will ebb and flow. Similar, but always evolving.