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On my seventh birthday, in inner-suburban New Jersey, I was presented with my aunt’s upright player piano and was soon provided by a loving parent with weekly lessons. Almost immediately I began filling music notebooks with ideas.
On returning to the states I accompanied the lessons of storied voice teachers and was assistant conductor with the opera companies in Portland (Ore.), Wolf Trap and New Orleans. For twenty years I served as assistant chorus master, stage band conductor and children's chorus director with the New York City Opera. In 2009 I joined the staff of the Metropolitan Opera as Children's Chorus Director. In that capacity I work with conductors such as James Levine (Tannhäuser, Wozzeck), Riccardo Muti (Attila), Simon Rattle (Pelléas et Mélisande), Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Carmen, Otello) and Valery Gergiev (Boris Godunov). I have been privileged with commissions to write for, among others, the Atlantic Three Choirs Festival, Bath Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, the Oakham School, the Harrow School, the period-instrument group "Parthenia", the Southampton Chamber Music Festival, and the Fairfield Orchestra. While I continue to compose in the choral medium, my attention has turned more to instrumental works. These include commissioned virtuosic essays for cello and for flute, as well as a full-scale symphony with children’s chorus, commissioned by the Fairfield Orchestra and premiered in Carnegie Hall. In June and July of 2011 I visited the Czech Republic for recordings of some of my compositions. In March 2013 Navona Records released a compact disc from these sessions, including the symphony and four of my chamber works. Visit www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv5904 for a full description of that release, "Imaginary Symphony and Other Tales". |
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