Kickstarter Available Dec/Jan Only!

Join my fan-funded recording project and help produce my upcoming recording project, “Between the Kiss and the Chaos”, featuring the internationally acclaimed Calder Quartet, to be released October 2012. Contribute safely through Kickstarter.com, the premier fan-funding platform. Rewards at all contribution levels, including CD presales.

My Holiday CD, “May All Good Things” available here.

Carnegie Hall Premier of New Terry Riley Electric Violin Concerto

The Nashville Symphony and I will perform the NY premier of a major new electric violin concerto by legendary composer Terry Riley in Carnegie Hall on Saturday, May 12, 2012 as the centerpiece of the gala closing concert of the 2012 Spring for Music Festival. Known as “the father of Minimalism”, Riley is one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. He changed the course of music history with his seminal 1964 work, “In C” which set the stage for composers such as John Adams, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich and even Pete Townsend of the rock band The Who, who paid homage to Riley with the synthesizer intro to the hit song, “Baba O’Riley”, (better known as “Teenage Wasteland.”)

Work on the new piece, commissioned last year by the Nashville Symphony, has been ongoing for the last 14 months and the new concerto is nearly complete. Nashville Symphony music director Giancarlo Guerrero will conduct the world premier in Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center on May 3, 2012 with additional concerts in Nashville on May 4 and 5 and other tour dates TBD May 6-11. I’ve been in close contact with Terry throughout the process, making five trips in the last year to his Moonshine Ranch in the Sierra foothills of CA to work with him. Terry and I have worked together for years–we’ve recorded several CD’s together and toured in the US and in England and Italy–and he’s intimately familiar with the 6 string electric violin and my unique approach with it. The new piece is astoundingly beautiful, full of brilliant orchestral color and counterpoint, sounds like a modern ballet and has a terrifyingly difficult violin part which, thankfully, I still have a year to learn.

Between the Kiss and the Chaos

The main feature of my upcoming recording is a chamber version of my 2nd violin concerto, “Between the Kiss and the Chaos”. This is a 5 movement work, each movement based on an iconic masterpiece of visual art. The arrangement is for string quartet and electric violin and I’m thrilled to be recording it with the Calder Quartet. The recording will also include a collection of 4 original solo compositions called 4 Scenes. Set for Oct 2012 release.

Masters

Here’s what else I’m working on these days. It’s a collaboration with puppeteer, singer, artist Brian Hull. It will be a 90 min work for Performing Arts Centers, with live video and a musical ensemble of myself, string quartet and percussion.