Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, harp, percussion and strings
I wrote this piece for the musicians of the U of C Chamber Orchestra upon my departure as their music director in the spring of 2008. Â The piece is in three “scenes”, each of which has a waltz at its core.
The above recording was made in a concert on October 5, 2009 at Indiana University with a so-called “Ad Hoc” orchestra. Below is the original recording I made in a concert on May 17, 2008 in Chicago. I include it because the performances are so different. I won’t harp on the fact that the musical quality at IU is, um, of a higher caliber, but I should point out the fact that the rooms are so totally different. The recording above sounds like it was made in a bath-tub; below, we were in a nice dry space. For some reason, I did the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in such situations — the performance in the wetter hall is a full minute faster than the one in the arid hall.
Here is a discussion of my performance history with this piece. Here is a clip from the IU performance, October 2009:
Desiderata, or “Two Girls, One Keyboard”, is a four-hand piano piece written for the Belsky-Maxwell Piano Duo.  It’s essentially a dance piece in three sections.
Thy King Cometh is my largest work to date, an oratorio for soloists, choir, and various orchestral forces. It was written in two sections: Music for Holy Week (2006) and Music for Advent (2007).
I began work on it in January 2006 when I was in the employ of the Presbyterian Church of Barrington, IL, and completed the Holy Week portions by early April for liturgical use in the Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday services.
Which all sounds right and proper, but let’s break it down: I was the interim music director of a modest, mainline-denominational church in the exurbs of Chicago. I had signed something like a 7-month contract, but I took this as an invitation to take over the most prominent week of the liturgical calendar with a wildly ambitious, multi-movement musical extravaganza which I began writing 4 months before it would be performed.
To say that the clergy were unbelievably supportive (and perhaps naïve) in letting an untested 22-year-old with barely any ecclesiastical experience do such a thing would be an understatement, and I still owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.
My stint as interim music director came to an end two weeks after Easter 2006, but the congregation banded together to commission more music from me, this time for Advent.
The result when the two sections are added together is a life-of-Christ oratorio that treads the same basic path as Handel’s Messiah. My version is much shorter though, clocking in at just over an hour.
I’ve played the whole piece in concert twice (with some new orchestrations), and individual movements have been done liturgically all over the place. The musical forces vary from piece to piece because I had a different set of musicians on each of the days of Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday).
The whole piece, in order, is in the YouTube link above. You can visit pages devoted to the individual movements (and purchase sheet music) below:
A moody piece for string orchestra, this movement opens my oratorio and is supposed to represent the 3 Wise Men wandering through the desert. There’s a bunch of little harmonics in the violin texture representing the twinkling of the star.
The opening violin solo is played by one of my best friends, and longtime collaborators, the incomparable Carlos Villarreal.
for Solo Soprano and Orchestra (2 Flutes and Strings)
My setting of the Magnificat is for solo soprano and orchestra (strings and flutes) and is in two movements.  I’ll admit my ignorance – I don’t know of any other settings of this text set for a solo soprano.  I must have sung a bazillion Anglican church anthems on this text, but they’re all for choir.  Anyhoo, it just made sense to me somehow.
I thought I was making a major mistake while writing this piece, because I kind of had a hybrid of several different lady sopranos’ voices in my head. Â The incomparably versatile Laura Lynch came in and nailed it, thus proving me wrong (or right, as the case may be).
Addendum (2012): Years later, I finally made a piano reduction of this piece. Here it is sung by the lovely Rebecca Johnson Lovering (who sang in the chorus of the original TKC recording):