Friday, January 7, 2022 (morning) Snow day! I decided to spend the extra time off working on the second movement. I got a cute little...

Tuesday, December 28, 2021 I spent the afternoon listening to a bunch of video game music so I could get some ideas for the second...

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 I woke up this morning with a secondary motive in my head, to pair with the “Are you trying” motive. And as...

also Friday, December 10 (but later) When I write music, I usually use one of three methods. Sometimes (rarely), a song feels like it...

Friday, December 10 I visited Bristow today and met with the 7th and 8th grade bands. They played parts of two winter concert pieces for...

Tuesday, November 9, 2021 Got a text from Cliff this afternoon that just said: “WE GOT IT!!!!” We spoke on the phone later that evening,...

I got a commission to write a piece for the Bristow Middle School Band in West Hartford, and since part of the grant that supports the...

25 Experts, 1 Teacher

Like many (most?) white people, I haven’t spent much of my life thinking about being white. I grew up in a small, almost entirely white...

Jim Crow came from Africa. He was a mythical creature, a shape-shifting trickster in the form of a bird, who lived in the stories and...

The entertainment of a minstrel show really began hours before the curtain went up, as the troupe paraded from the train station to their...

This is the first of three posts providing some background about my current show, "The Scottsboro Boys," which runs June 28-Aug 4 at...

In 2004, I was a first-year music teacher in a magnet middle school in East Hartford. Any public school educator will tell you that the...

I’ve recently been reflecting on how so much of my work as a teacher and an artist is focused toward the simple goal of being more human....

WHAT IS IT? I don’t think anybody knows what music directing is. I often hear/read music director colleagues lamenting that we seem to be...

This past Wednesday night I made my debut on the stage of Mortenson Hall, the largest of the spaces at the Bushnell Performing Arts...

I was recently included in a Hartford Magazine feature on the thriving arts scene in Hartford. It was fun to arrive at the group photo...

This past Sunday I completed my 10th half marathon. I expected it to be an unpleasant slogfest due to the fact that my training runs had...

More and more, we rely on technology to make our art. Sometimes I marvel at the sheer number of bells and whistles that go into putting...

7/30-18 I was so pleased to have finally gotten the call to music direct a show at my neighborhood theater, where I have worked as a sub...