Welcome.

Thanks for visiting my website. My music, film, and soundscapes explore the patterns and rhythms of everyday life. I hope you will find these compositions relaxing and inspiring. Here are a few different ways you can enjoy my work…

I just completed a month in residence at the Jaffrey Civic Center in conjunction with the show Double Image. (More details and updates below.)
Watch and listen to my earliest collaborations with Frankie and learn more about each piece. (Click here to see more.)
If you would like to listen to a selection of my music while you relax, read, or work, you can enjoy a playlist of my music here.

Double Image: The Show

Frankie Brackley Tolman and I recently wrapped up our show at the the Jaffrey Civic Center. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the exhibit.

I spent the duration of the show in residence at the gallery. What a rewarding experience to meet so many local art lovers and to hear your questions and feedback. As a composer, I often work in solitude, so it was a treat to share this work with the public and to talk to viewers directly about their experiences with these multi-media pieces.

You can read a review of Double Image in the latest issue of Art New England. I will be sharing some of the work from that show on my site very soon, so stay tuned!

Double Image: A History

Gardening in the Rain

I have been an admirer of Frankie Brackley Tolman for many years. Her works as a visual artist are in response to the ever-changing beauty of her surroundings in rural New Hampshire. We share these surroundings. Inspired by her paintings, I decided to undertake a collaborative project, integrating her paintings with music and film.

Since it’s inception in 2017, this collaboration has evolved into a final work which follows the musical form of a sonata. In Sonata in G, the four movements take their titles from those of the paintings: “botanical garden,” “BLUE FLAGS,” “It’s A Jungle Out There,” and “Abundance.”

I began this project in the spring of 2017 by filming one of Frankie’s paintings, “Gardening in the Rain." I was attracted to this work because of it’s large splashes of color, which jumped out of the canvas. This effect was created by the large amount of open canvas, free space surrounding the flowers, and splashes of vivid colors–especially yellow. This imagery led me to film the field in front of our home, bursting with the perennial springtime daffodils naturalized throughout the landscape.

I began experimenting with these two different videos.

Merging the clips from Frankie’s canvas with those of the daffodils–two-dimensional inanimate object with three dimensional live flowers–some exciting possibilities came into focus. (See the final video piece below.)

As I continued to experiment with various video editing techniques, Frankie and I drafted ideas of proposals for this collaborative project.

We adopted our team title, Double Image. This reflected the effect observed when her painting was merged with the daffodils in a short film. It also was a statement of shared connections, personally and through our art.

My first collaboration with Frankie Brackley Tolman—Gardening in the Rain. (Note: This is a silent piece with no sound or music.)

4 SEASONS FOR SOLO HARP

For my second collaboration, 4 Seasons, I wanted to create a work around our New England seasons; an ever changing kaleidoscope. I composed the music first for this project. As an instrument of both beautiful delicacy and great power, I selected the harp. Also I was excited at the prospect of having gifted harpist Rachel Clemente perform the piece.

I selected paintings which expressed aspects of each season, and interwove them with the scenes and sounds of the natural world. Scoring these to the harp music, I hoped to bring to life the magic of our life in New Hampshire’s forests and fields. Watch the full piece here…

My second collaboration with Frankie—4 Seasons for Solo Harp

SONATA IN G FOR PIANO

Sonata in G, a four movement, twelve minute work, was created in two phases.

The first was the production of the film. Focusing on Frankie’s paintings of flowers, I selected four paintings which reflected the range of her styles. In the natural light of her studio, I used the camera as an “eye” to explore her art, and then filmed three different gardens; two at Frankie’s home and another of a friend in our community. Integrating the gardens with the paintings, I created a video for each painting, botanical garden, BLUE FLAGS, It’s A Jungle Out There, and Abundance.

After completion of the film, I composed the music for the score.

The intent was to convey a deep impression of the painting while following the sonata form of classical music. The piano was chosen as an instrument well suited for this work.

A two-minute excerpt from Sonata in G for Piano

ABOUT SONATA IN G FOR PIANO

Sonata in G was composed as a score for the film I created featuring the paintings of artist, Frankie Brackley Tolman. I selected her four paintings botanical gardens, BLUE FLAGS, It’s A Jungle Out There, and Abundance, not only because they reflected Frankie’s stylistic range, but also because they were well suited to a musical score in the classical form of a sonata. I filmed the paintings and also her gardens (adding a garden from another friend), and merged the images, animate and inanimate.

The intent was to convey a deep impression of each of the paintings while following this form of classical music. The piano was chosen as an instrument well suited for this work.

The four movements, titled after her paintings, are ordered as is standard for a sonata, with the first movement in a sonata-form, followed by a slow movement, then a dance, and ending with the last movement in a sonata-rondo form.

Tonally, the work is modal, centered around the pitch of G (for gardens). In botanical gardens, the first theme is stated in G Dorian, and followed by the second theme in D Dorian. returning to the tonic of G Dorian, as in the classical sonata-form.

From this first movement centered on G, the second movement progresses to the mediant of B Dorian. Keeping this same key signature, the dance movement is in D Ionian, and the finale, Abundance, returns to G Dorian.

Following this over arching structure, and in response to each of the paintings as well as the environs of the gardens, particular musical ideas - melodic themes, harmonies, scales - are used and developed.

The imagery of botanical gardens, the painting as well as the garden, inspired the use of spare lyrical flowing themes. Influenced by the Asian appearing images in BLUE FLAGS, I used a pentatonic scale with quartal harmonies. The whimsy of Frankie’s It’s A Jungle Out There, and the grand performance of the garden moth, demanded the incorporation of the New England contradance tune, There She Goes, with its traditional rhythms and harmonies. The bold colors and brush strokes Abundance inspired a style of music associated with the impressionist composers, especially the quartal harmonies of Debussy.
For the performer: This composition can be performed without the film. However, if it is performed with the film, strict adherence to the metronome markings must be maintained for accurate synchronization.