Compositions

Theme and Variations for Bassoon and Piano
This was my first collegiate composition and world premiere.  It was with this piece that I stepped out of my music theory comfort zone and started to discover my voice as a composer.

Night Land
Night Land (Live)
Night Land was my second composition and is written for a string quartet.  Having a background with the violin, I find that I am perhaps most comfortable writing for strings.  The idea behind the piece is that you are stuck in a nightmare and every time you try to get out, you are pulled back in.  The last section was written to mimic the unease you cannot shake when you wake up from a nightmare.  I have two versions listed, one version is a live version so there may be a few mistakes here and there, the other version is an exact replication of the score.

Duo Piano Rondo
Dou Piano Rondo (Live)
When I started this composition I was purposely trying to achieve an entirely different sound than my previous compositions.  I wanted to write something with a quicker tempo and more upbeat tone.  I liked the idea of having two pianos that would play back and forth and then join and sometimes crash together.  Again I have two versions of this composition; a live recording as well as a version that is technically exact to the score.

Spatial Odyssey
Spactial Odyssey was my first electronic composition.  The original was performed in an auditorium in surround sound.  In this composition I am focused mainly on ambient noises, sound manipulation, layers and textures.  There is no melodic line to follow, however maybe the listener would find something to follow almost as though they were in a dream.  It was important to me that even though the music may come across as disjunct, there is a certain amount of fluidity at the same time.

Audible Machinale
This is my second attempt in the electronic music field and this time I wanted to push the boundaries and see how much the listener would take before "throwing in the towel".  I wanted to see a physical reaction from the listener, whether it be a certain amount of uncomfortableness or interest in the music.  Again this piece was originally performed in an auditorium with surround sound.  I wanted the listener to feel the music in their chest when they heard this piece.

Clarinet Sonata
This composition I wrote because I wanted to explore the sonata form.  I chose the clarinet because a friend of mine, a Clarinet Performance major, asked me if I wouldn't mind writing something she could premiere at her recital.

Nightgown of Love
As a voice major, I spent a majority of my time studying and singing art songs, and for my senior recital I decided to compose one.  The song is composed for piano and mezzo-soprano, however I did not perform it.  This still is one of my simpler but favorite pieces.

Fantasia on Dido and Aeneas
As with the art song, I composed this last piece for my senior recital.  Up until that point I hadn't written for any instrumentation larger than a quartet.  This was the largest and most tedious composition I had written, however it is the one up to this point that I am most proud of.  This is a programmatic composition based on the story of Dido and Aeneas found in Virgil's Aeneid.  I only have the live recording posted, and even though there are several technical errors, the emotion the players brought to the composition was something that I could not replicate.