Woody Allen, Richard Wagner, and immoral artists

by | Feb 6, 2014 | Uncategorized

The recent resurfacing of allegations against Woody Allen have brought up one of the great questions about art and artists. What do we do when a really terrible human being makes great art?Musically speaking, the greatest efforts to address this question have been...

3 new etudes for organ

by | Feb 4, 2014 | Uncategorized

You know that thing where Chopin says to Liszt, “I would like to borrow your way of playing my Etudes.”? I had the chance to go an hear Chris Marks play three of my Etudes the other day (from memory!). I promised I would put up my performance of the same...

My attitude toward score markings

by | Feb 3, 2014 | Uncategorized

I’ve had a few people ask me about my score markings lately. There are always questions that conductors and performers have about tempo markings, dynamics, and phrasing. I’m not offering this as some sort of justification for ignoring a composers wishes,...

Anyone want to fess up after 20 years

by | Feb 1, 2014 | Uncategorized

I was chatting yesterday with Mollie Manner, and something made me recall a tale of mystery from my sophomore year as an undergrad.During my freshman year, the music department had put on a showcase at the performing arts center downtown. I played a solo on the...

Radiolarians

by | Jan 28, 2014 | Uncategorized

YouTube somehow messed up one of the videos I made of one of my atonal piano pieces from a few years ago. I had a little time today to repair it. I originally wrote this piece as a Masters student with Kevin Hanlon at SMU. I am still very fond of it.

Can we put “piano tone” to rest?

by | Jan 19, 2014 | Uncategorized

I recently heard a close friend talking about “piano tone” again. Amazingly enough, there are still a huge number of pianists that believe that you can get a certain “tone” out of the piano that is more beautiful than another tone. One of my...