The scripture says that “Power and life are in the tongue.” (Proverbs 18:21) Simply put, we are what we believe and speak about ourselves. This work was commissioned by the LA Master Chorale.
My intent is to re-create the musical experience of an African American Pentecostal church service that I enjoyed being apart of while growing up in this denomination.
This piece pays homage to my family's four generational affiliation with the Pentecostal church. My intent is to re-create the musical experience of an African American Pentecostal church service that I enjoyed being apart of while growing up in this denomination.
In 2020, I was asked to compose a piece using the provocative poetry of Terrance Hayes. I chose the following three poems from Hayes’ collection American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin because I felt they represented my personal state of mind and view points as a Black American man (especially Inside Me) at that time. This piece was commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society.
A song cycle for voices and strings.
This piece was inspired by an interview with Oprah Winfrey
Bill Traylor was born a slave in Alabama in 1853 and died in 1949. He lived long enough to see the United States of America go through many social and political changes. He was an eyewitness to the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the Great Migration.
Brea(d)th is a classical work, inspired by the enduring presence of George Floyd the Ancestor, asking America to consider an equitable future. We come to the resilient and root-rich Twin Cities as outsiders, but we composed this work from within the walls of Black emotion, curiosity, and dignity. The piece explores a historical timeline that stretches from the pre-colonial to the present condition, and perhaps further, into a post-pandemic America. Who would we be if we used covid-19 as an opportunity to focus on both public health, *and* public healing? Our entire country has endured a trauma… how do we publicly heal?...
"Drop Thy still dews of quietness // Till all our striving cease” Deeply inspired by Howard Thurman, I wanted to write a piece that encourages others to simply reflect and breathe.
An arrangement of this classic aria from the 24 Italian Art songs collection.
As the son of a Pentecostal preacher, no other memory stands out more than being a part of a “tarrying service”. The “tarry service”, usually on Friday nights, was for those members (mostly teenagers) who had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
“If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing, Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.”
Film Cue with Middle Eastern influence.
This piece is an artistic reflection dedicated to those who have been murdered wrongfully by an oppressive power; namely Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
Score for the First Runner Up for the Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Contest
This piece was inspired by a journal entry from Ludvig van Beethoven’s notebook written in 1815: “Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share In my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.”
These are my feelings on the crimes of BOTH the oppressor and the oppressed in Baltimore and throughout the country.
Dance has always been a part of any culture. Particularly in Black American communities, dance is and has been the fabric of social gatherings. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of dances created over the span of American history that have originated from the social climate of American slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow. This piece is an orchestral study of the music that is associated with the Ring Shout, the Waltz, Tap Dance and the Holy Dance. All of these dances are but a mere representation of the wide range of cultural and social differences within the Black American communities.