Research & C.V.

If  you want samples of my commercial recording work you can search most of the CD's listed in the discography and download them from the iTunes music store or buy them at Amazon or other retail outlets.

I received my Ph.D. in Musicology from Royal Holloway, University of London.  I was fortunate to study with the musicologist Nicholas Cook.

C.V.

C.V.

My current C.V. as a PDF file

Research

            My thesis and my primary research have been in contemporary music and the cultural impact of sound reproduction technologies.  Besides my writing I am actively involved as a practitioner in both commercial and experimental technologies that employ digital audio processing and manipulation.  My creative work encompasses repurposed compositional projects such as the version of the African folklore piece Milee Yookoee (available here on the Research & C.V. page) and investigational explorations such as my remixing of a portion of the San Francisco symphony’s recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (available on the Papers / Talks page).  I have also collaborated with a jazz piano trio on an innovative exploration of off-line improvisation and with a rock band on repurposed approaches to performance.  Along with these original approaches to music creation I have been active in initiatives regarding music education for children.

            My research explores how mass media, and now the Internet, have made for communities of interest that are truly transnational, and how many of the most conspicuous are established based on musical interests.  I maintain that this kind of social exchange is a constructive cultural force. The new sonic architecture of music has created startling changes in both musical content and meaning.  Current musical technologies combine with the human need to create and they generate new forms of and new opportunities for musical participation. New media in music creation is having a profoundly democratizing effect on the population’s ability to create and disseminate original music recordings.

            Fresh approaches to constructed musical performance suggest new areas of creative expression through expanded opportunities for collaboration.  Those of us positively disposed toward the ancient marriage of music and technology are free to embrace practices that enact community in today’s highly technologized musical environments.  The computer continues to act as a primary tool for breaking down categories of musical construction.  My research explores such musical creativity and collaboration in both theory and practice.

            I am continuing my collaborative work on original music creations.  These works expand the interactive capabilities of musicians and computer technology.  To expand the theoretical side of my work I intend to organize conferences and symposia that focus attention on the New Media capabilities within mainstream popular music construction.  Technological mediation is part of the entire history of musical creation.  My research bolsters the notion that computer-based music making follows in line with music creation from the most traditional sources.   I am actively pursuing the positive implementation of technology in collaborative music making as well as in musicological terms – bridging the sometimes wide gap between practitioner and theoretician.  For these reasons my research objectives focus primarily on collaborative work in the creation and critical study of music.