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Information about me...
I don't like to talk about myself, but it's my site so I suppose I have to. I'm a physician who is also a composer and am heavily involved with information technology, medical informatics, online medical education and other varied interests.
I was born in 1961, and went to both the Mannes College of Music and the Juilliard Pre-College Division while in high school in order to study composition. I studied with Sylvia Rabinof, Bruce Adolphe and Craig Shuler, wrote a lot of serial and 12-tone music, and had one work publicly performed outside of Juilliard. This was a piece (Four Landscapes for Six Instruments) that was performed at the inaugural concert of North/South Consonance at Symphony Space in NYC.
After graduation from public high school in Millburn, NJ, I attended the U. of Chicago as a biological sciences major, and also stayed on for medical school there. During my time at Chicago, I did research into the origin of corn with George Beadle, studied physics with James Cronin, and had many other great teachers. Since I didn't spend all my time studying (although I spent way too much time doing just that), I also had a radio program on the campus station (WHPK-FM) where I got to interview Steve Reich, Philip Glass (a U of C alumnus), La Monte Young, Terry Riley and others. I had abandoned writing 12-tone music during college; the piano piece Ineffabilities was the last 12-tone piece I wrote. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with 12-tone music, just that I had gotten interested in a different approach, which is exemplified by all of the music I've written since 1981.
While an ob/gyn resident in Boston, I met my wife Debbie, who got me using a computer (I was using a manual typewriter) and eventually purchased an Ensoniq KS-32 synthesizer as a present for me. Using the computer for music notation and playback has allowed me to let others potentially hear my music in the absence of live musicians. That said, there is no substitute for human musical performance, and all of my music is meant to be interpreted, not merely played back as a computer would. Debbie and I have two children: Arielle and Isaac, and reside in the Philadelphia area. After several years of residency, fellowship and gynecology practice, I transitioned into a career in information technology, medical writing and quality management. I was until recently Chief Medical Officer at MedCases, a company that developed Web-based continuing medical education, and am currently VP and Medical Director at SciFluent in Yardley, PA. I continue to compose when I have spare time (which is not as often as I'd like, of course). Through 2007, I was on the board of the Philadelphia Chapter of the ACLU and volunteered with ActionAIDS.
Information about specific works...
piece #1, piece #2, piece #3 for electronic organ
These were written over the past few years, but in the order 2-3-1. Piece #1 started first, but I wasn't sure what instrumental combination i wanted for it (I first thought to do voices and organ, but it just didn't work), and it sat for a long time until I had already written pieces 2 and 3. Piece 1 is the longer of the three works, and is the only one that has significant sections that are not streams of sixteenth notes.
vector music for edward hopper
I like Hopper's paintings. I also thought the title sounded interesting.
I wrote this for Debbie. She didn't like it very much. True story: I was playing it on our stereo system many years ago, and Debbie came home from work, heard it and told me to turn it off, since she isn't fond of some of the music I like to listen to. I then told her it was the quartet I wrote for her, so she felt pretty bad. I still like to kid her about it. Two sets is in two movements, the second of which is much longer than the first. It was my first piece for string quartet, so I had a lot of expectations, and it's one of my favorite works.
brass piece for arielle victoria
Written for my daughter, Arielle. It's a long work for six brass instruments (3 trumpets, 2 bass trombones, 1 tuba), is very difficult for brass players since it really requires circular breathing at some points, and is in three movements. The last movement was arranged for string quartet as mf (see below).
(description taken from http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mftoub.htm )
mf was developed at the suggestion of the violinist Christina Fong, who wanted a piece for string quartet for an upcoming CD of works relating to Morton Feldman. I actually composed a new work for string quartet for this purpose (five notes for christina fong), but Christina indicated a preference for some of my faster compositions, and thought to adapt something else for her. In this case, I turned to the third movement of Brass Piece for Arielle Victoria, which I wrote for my daughter several years ago and is pretty fast. In arranging it for string quartet, it is nearly identical to the original music, except that some octave changes had to be made to accommodate the cello.
I had originally titled it third movement for mf and used a mezzo piano dynamic
throughout. Christina suggested I call it simply mf and up the volume to mezzo
forte. I liked the idea, especially since it is a triple-entendre (mf being
the initials of Morton Feldman, the dynamic level, and a shortened form
of an epithet
that needs not be repeated here). As much as I like the original version for
three trumpets, two bass trombones and tuba, I also think it works pretty well
for string quartet.
I wrote this at the suggestion of the violinist Christina Fong, who wanted a short work for string quartet for a forthcoming 96khz/24bit audio DVD. I wrote it literally in one weekend, and it's a slow, quiet piece for the most part. The first violinist plays only the same five notes, hence the title.
This is a work for string orchestra and electronic organ. It's pretty long, and is built on certain ideas that recur throughout the first and third movements. The second movement is for strings only.
A single long movement for string orchestra, in which the performers are often divided into multiple sections.
A play on words. I wrote this for a former patient of mine, who really likes it. It is in three movements, and the title relates to the fact that in many ways, a lot of different musical ideas come and go without any obvious relation to what comes next.
A short work for marimba, piano and electronic organ, that all came out of a series of three superimposed musical fragments I was playing with one day on my synthesizer. I also wrote this for Arielle.
A work for chorus based on the last paragraph of the mourner's Kaddish, in aramaic. When Arielle was younger, we'd read certain prayers from a children's book at bedtime, and one of these was a "prayer for peace" that was essentially the last paragraph of the Kaddish. I never knew what these words meant until I was reading Arielle this children's book, and I really liked the sentiment. The challenge was to use a short, two-line text in a choral piece in a way that was of interest to me.
four landscapes for six instruments (1978-1979)
An older, 12-tone work I wrote while at Juilliard. All but the first movement was performed on 5/26/79 at Juilliard's Paul Hall by a group of friends (Jody Krosnick, Paul Garment, Alex Shuhan, Ben Mundy, Vince Nobile, Joshua Gordon) with myself conducting. The work is scored for flute, alto sax, French horn, trumpet, trombone and contrabass. It was performed in its entirely at the inaugural concert of North/South Consonance under the direction of Max Lifchitz at Symphony Space (NYC) on 9/17/80. It was on the same program as works by Ives, Varése, Mamlok and other established, well known composers. The first movement is the longer of the four, and is most complex. It's very different from, yet similar to, my more recent music. The use of tone rows is fairly strict, and the rhythmic complexity is pretty high. I no longer write 12-tone music, and my compositions since 1981 have been more repetitive and sparse. However, I still like a lot of my earlier works, all of which were written either during high school or college.
This was my last 12-tone work, and is written in one long movement for piano (somewhere around 35-40 minutes in length). While it is very strictly serial, there are sections that are more repetitive in nature and freetonal. The last portion is very quiet, and sounds almost like late Feldman. However, I had heard absolutely nothing of Feldman's music at that point, so any resemblance is purely coincidental. Technically, Ineffabilities is a very difficult work to play, and many measures require up to six staves to notate.
In late 2004, we moved into an 85-year-old house in Wyncote, PA owned at that time by Carol and Roger Copland. Roger was a distant relative of the composer Aaron Copland, and Carol is an accomplished flautist. Roger was an incredible person, and in the brief time that we knew one another, we became friends. Roger passed away in April, 2005 after a long illness and I wanted to write something in his memory. As Morton Feldman had written a work for violin and piano entitled For Aaron Copland, I thought it only fitting to compose something entitled "for roger copland." I initially intended it for solo flute, but realized after starting work on the piece that the range I wanted required an alto flute instead. This was fine, as I prefer the alto flute in many ways. It is a long piece (just under 30 minutes) for a solo instrument that is not capable of sounding more than one note at a time (in the absence of extended techniques). That made it a particular challenge to write. Interestingly, while it has many repetitive modular components, it also uses some serial techniques. In particular, certain segments are derived from a 12-tone row, although this is not at all a 12-tone composition.
textbook: music of solitary landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS) (1984-1987)
The title, incidentally, just sounded interesting. IPS is Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, the father of asepsis (along with Joseph Lister). I had gotten interested in his life and read parts of his textbook Die Ätiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers while I was living in Chicago. The "textbook" part comes from the fact that each of the seven sections is named for a particular poem or book that I found of interest. While each "text" had something to do with each section, the work is not at all programmatic, and nothing should be read into the music based on what I chose for each section. I should also note that while the piece is indeed titled "textbook: music of solitary landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS)," in later years I made the mistake of inadvertently writing the title as "...descending landscapes in hyperspace..." I'm of the opinion that it probably could be either of these.
The texts are:
textbook is a really long piece for solo piano (over two hours in length). Each section stands alone, but I've also gotten fond of listening to this as a continuous work, in which each section flows uninterrupted into the next one. Either way works. The first section includes two solo contrabass players in addition to the piano. It could be done just with a piano, but the two basses sound really nice in conjunction with the bass line in the piano. I wrote it between 1984 and 1987, and it represents a bit of an evolutionary process relating to what I was writing during those years. Perhaps it's better put as "evolution, yes, intelligent design, no."
seven songs after poetry of james joyce (1978)
This was what I would consider my first "real" work, in that I was writing for myself, not for my composition teacher. The second song also represents my first 12-tone composition. I was very much into Joyce's novels in high school, but wasn't the biggest fan of his poetry, so I figured it wouldn't hurt the texts to set them to music. While this music is very different from what I write nowadays (as it should be), it represents one of my favorite compositions. It was performed once at Juilliard in 1979. Margaret Lee was the soprano and did a great job with the very difficult vocal part. I was the pianist, and it is obvious from the tape that I'd only had one piano lesson.
I wrote this piece at the request of Glenn Freeman, who suggested the title and wanted an extended work for string quartet lasting at least one hour. for philip glass actually lasts about two hours, and is dedicated to my son Isaac. The work has nothing to do with Philip Glass, incidentally. It is generally very quet throughout, with few dynamic changes and minimal markings of any kind. There are two sections in which I wanted to use the strings in a percussive fashion, playing col legno (with the wooden back of the bow) throughout. I realized that we generally think of strings as melodic instruments, and thought it would be interesting to use them like a percussion battery, focusing on the rhythmic elements. for philip glass actually contains some serial elements, even some 12-tone rows, but this is not a pervasive element of the music, which is generally repetitive and quiet.
this piece intentionally left blank (2007)
This came about as an improvisation, and is virtually unchanged other than a few minor tweaks. It was composed using an Ensoniq KS-32 synthesizer providing input into Reason 3.0.4. The score is a pretty close approximation of what was improvised, but is not 100% accurate. It can be performed by any keyboard, although it could also be performed for any group of instruments. I felt the bass line would be very interesting if played by a bass guitar, for example. This work is dedicated to my friend Kel Smith. It was premiered on May 9th, 2007 by the Diverse Instrument Ensemble under Lloyd Rogers at Cal State Fullerton in an arrangement by Paul Bailey for oboe, alto sax, french horn, trombone, bass guitar and two vibraphones.
A piece for open instrumentation in one section, this work takes its title as a reference to the ongoing genocide in darfur and other past pogroms. The composition, however, is not intended to be programmatic. There are many potential instrumental combinations that would be optimal for a realization of this work. In addition to string orchestra, a small chamber ensemble that includes bass guitar, vibraphone or marimba, a few strings and winds come to mind.
As with darfur pogrommen, this all started with an improvisation. I originally was thinking of this for piano solo, but realized it would work very well for violin and piano, which opened up additional possibilities as I continued to work on the piece. It covers a lot of varied ground in approximately 40 minutes. The term 'ushabti' refers to a statue or figure placed in tombs of deceased Egyptians for 2,000 years beginning around 1900 BC. Also known as 'shabti' (although a shabti more precisely refers to similar figures in the Egyptian Book of the Dead), a ushabti was believed to act in place of the deceased person, performing acts of labor for that person in the afterlife. There is no programmatic significance to the title in relation to the music, other than like many of my title choices, I thought it sounded cool.
what's on deck:
I have a lot of earlier music that only exists in handwritten form. I hope to have a chance in the coming year to post these scores as PDFs and MP3s since I'm really happy with them overall. These include works for violin + piano, piano solo, chamber ensemble, orchestra, soprano + piano, chorus and others.
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