Duo Chronicles

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8M-zIQms8

Well, we made it.  52 weeks later, we've put up a new video every single Tuesday.  Every week, a new arrangement, a new recording, a new video, and most of the time, a new composition altogether...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SWD2MKhiJU

True North, is thought of as the direction along the earth's surface towards the geographic North Pole. This the title for this weeks composition. Throughout this project it has been more challenging to write about the music than to work on the music. T...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lteWWU2x_yI

In the bebop era, it was a common practice to take a popular song and write a new melody over the familiar chord changes.  Charlie Parker wrote many of his tunes this way, including Donna Lee (the changes are from Indiana), Ornithology (on How High the...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmgf9JSR1iA

The title "The Road Taken" is based on of one of more popular Robert Frost most poems, "The Road Not Taken." The whole idea for the music stems from a particular chord that I like to use, a major chord with the 4th added so a kind of consonant dissonance...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkhPsSUQ0Jk

Quadrivium -- from Latin, meaning "a crossroads.  A place where four roads meet"

This composition is a modern choral of sorts, with four clarinet parts playing what might be more traditional sung in four part harmony, or played on an organ.  My inspira...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr0yHx-88fA

For the past couple of weeks, I've been at Portland Center Stage (http://www.pcs.org/) as part of the orchestra for a production of the "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (http://www.pcs.org/spellingbee/)."  The show is a musical comedy, following...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkPZMC0Vmko

Influence is all around us whether we are conscious of it or not. Ultimately what resonates with us comes out in how we express ourselves and in our art. Chances are if a thought or idea resonates with you, it probably does with someone else as well. I l...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAMUdSSRJNo

The title for this weeks composition is a ode to the ending of the popular television show "Lost," which is ending this month after six seasons. Much of the appeal of the show for me is not only the individual characters and their stories, but also the u...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAVENHlAwc

I wrote "Open Road, Closed Door" just a couple of weeks after moving from New York to Portland in November of '07.  If I remember correctly, the first performance of the song was at the Portland Jazz Festival in February 2008 when I was featured at Darr...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdPy9xxdbbY

When I was thinking of possible titles for this piece of music, flow is a word that kept coming to mind. Flow, in how it relates to water and also the flow of information or knowledge. By definition the word cascade fits perfectly. One of the definitions...