Commissioned by John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony, the science-inspired Symphony No. 1: Phase Change draws on two rich artistic inspirations: first, classical instrumental tone poems have a history of being used to depict natural phenomena through sound, with famous examples including Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Debussy’s La Mer, Smetena’s Vltava, John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean, and Meredith Monk’s On Behalf of Nature; and second, knowledge mobilization of STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) fields through the use of music as a medium to transmit human knowledge.

The construction of Phase Change draws on both the macroscopic (historical and cultural, scientific, educational, and past artistic depictions) and microscopic (the harmonic, melodic, and structural theory and orchestration of each movement artistically depicting molecular structure). The motivic engine that forms the basis of the harmonic and melodic content is inspired by the scientific idea of entropy, where all heat-based structures will gradually decline into disorder, while the structure and orchestration are inspired by the architecture of different states of matter and periods of phase change.

Commissioned by John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the symphony and symphony sponsor ArcBest, Swank Royalty is a symphonic fanfare inspired by the optimism of progressive 80s pop.

Time Flies is an orchestral overture that celebrates 100 years of music with the Fort Smith Symphony. When I was first asked by John to commemorate this auspicious occasion with a new work of music for the orchestra that is filled with my friends and colleagues, I immediately jumped at the opportunity. I knew I wanted to write a piece of music that highlighted the many colours, orchestrations, and moods of the last century of symphonic music, and, knowing John’s love of aviation, wanted it to feel like an adventurous airplane flight through 100 years of music.

The piece begins with an almost mysterious fanfare, like the beginning of an old black and white TV show, radio drama, or the starting of a plane beginning its ascent. This is followed by a series of melodies, harmonies, and orchestrations that purposefully reference the harmonic language and post-romantic grandeur of the 1920s and 30s – when composers like Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Respighi, Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok, and Fauré were at their peak. Two minutes in, this overture to the golden era of orchestral music suddenly takes a turn, and the piece then travels through a series of other orchestral vignettes inspired by the past century of music.

Some of these embedded musical love letters to the history of symphonic music in America includes references to golden era Hollywood film scores, 1980s musical intellectualism, the American post-romantics, pointillism, serialism, the space race; the classic recordings I grew up on by Stokowski, Toscanini, and Bernstein; and a combination of the rich extended tonalities of the Jazz masters and the almost overripe orchestration of late-stage romanticism.

LISTEN

Co-composed with my partner Christina Giacona, In the Waiting Room and The Time We Could Have Lost are a pair of tone poems that came to us unexpectedly in the winter of 2022 as a kind of artistic release from the grief that we experienced that year. In June of 2022, on the same day that one of our best friends died unexpectedly, Christina was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.

In the Waiting Room is an attempt to put into sound the emotional turmoil, fear, love, and almost hallucinogenic shared experience we had during Christina’s seven-hour surgery. Beginning with an internal scream, In the Waiting Room constantly sways from hope and love to anxiety and fear of losing a loved one in a stream-of-consciousness structure built from the uncontrolled emotional mess of that day.

LISTEN

Co-composed with my partner Christina Giacona, In the Waiting Room and The Time We Could Have Lost are a pair of tone poems that came to us unexpectedly in the winter of 2022 as a kind of artistic release from the grief that we experienced that year. In June of 2022, on the same day that one of our best friends died unexpectedly, Christina was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.

The Time We Could Have Lost is the second part of this journey. More reflective than In the Waiting Room, The Time We Could Have Lost is our love letter to each other, a grief-formed thankfulness that we still have each other. Our own abstract fear of losing each other was made real by the loss of our friend, and this composition is the bloom of gratitude and love that only comes from the depths of shared grief.

LISTEN

Mirror Sermon is based on anti-apartheid hero and activist Dennis Brutus’s poem of the same name. Dennis Brutus is more commonly known for his activism than his poetry - forcing the western powers to ban apartheid South Africa from the Olympic Games, getting shot in the back while trying to escape imprisonment, and spending 16 months at Robben Island in a cell next to Nelson Mandela.

I first found Dennis Brutus’s poetry following his death in 2009. The poems in his book Sirens, Knuckles, Boots present a personal and visceral insight into a torn relationship with his homeland that I found fascinating and moving. The specific poem that this work is based on, Mirror Sermon, struck me as almost overwhelmingly musical. He mentions slow sarabandes, cacophonous gavottes, graceless dances, writhing arabesques, mirrored images, and jerking strings. I knew I had to set it to music.

While the setting is purposely imperfect (for example, there are no actual gavottes or arabesques, and the sarabande occurs in the wrong place) the structure of the quartet is intimately tied to the poem. The “cold reflection” and “interlocking nudity” of the unaccompanied viola and cello at the beginning, the cavorting in “graceless dance” of the line that is eventually taken over by the violin and cello, the “twitching strings of lust” in the first violin cadenza, the “flat-two dimensional” sarabande that unfolds at measure, the “grotesque”, dance of the septuplet violin line that is a broken repetition of the violin cadenza, the cadenza’s pale remembrance of the earlier motives, and the finale’s “macabre dance of death” are all directly influenced by the poem.

Since the poem is based on a reflection that is slowly revealed to be more and more horrifying and changed, everything in the quartet is based on the initial motif presented by the viola. All of these alterations continue to swirl around themselves, developing and changing until they are finally crystallized in furious concert in the final macabre dance of death.

LISTEN

Solid Liquid Gas was commissioned by the Oklahoma Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. Through this tone poem, audiences will experience a sonic narrative of a group of particles going from absolute zero to 55,000 degrees Kelvin, starting with the eerie supersymmetric quantum choreography of Bose-Einstein Condensates, to the vibrational potential energy of solid crystalline structures, the flow of liquid atoms, the Brownian motion of gas particles, and finally to the electrical conductivity of an ionization wave of plasma. These states of change happen in three movements: the beautiful and static first movement Bose-Einstein Condensate | Solid; the powerful crashing waves of the second movement Liquid; and the chaotic grooves of the third movement Gas | Plasma.

LISTEN

Cube of Light is a 41-minute post-classical visual album created by Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon. The music is influenced by the sounds of modern classical composition, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Muse, Animal Collective, the Stranger Things soundtrack, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. 

Inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s “1m3 light” and Leo Villarreal’s “Star Ceiling,” “Cube of Light” is centered around the idea of artistic reflection and the journey of light through space, time, and consciousness.  

“Cube of Light” can be experienced as a stereo audio album, a Dolby Atmos immersive audio multimedia installation, as a continuous looping multimedia work, as stand-alone music videos, or as a live performance with full symphony orchestra, wind symphony, or chamber ensemble.

The seven music videos which comprise the visual side of the album were choreographed by Hui Cha Poos, Maggie Boyett, Audrey Johnston, Tina Kambour, Austin Nieves, and Kim Loveridge. 

LISTEN

Cube of Light is a 41-minute post-classical visual album created by Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon. The music is influenced by the sounds of modern classical composition, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Muse, Animal Collective, the Stranger Things soundtrack, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. 

Inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s “1m3 light” and Leo Villarreal’s “Star Ceiling,” “Cube of Light” is centered around the idea of artistic reflection and the journey of light through space, time, and consciousness.  

“Cube of Light” can be experienced as a stereo audio album, a Dolby Atmos immersive audio multimedia installation, as a continuous looping multimedia work, as stand-alone music videos, or as a live performance with full symphony orchestra, wind symphony, or chamber ensemble.

The seven music videos which comprise the visual side of the album were choreographed by Hui Cha Poos, Maggie Boyett, Audrey Johnston, Tina Kambour, Austin Nieves, and Kim Loveridge. 

LISTEN

Cube of Light is a 41-minute post-classical visual album created by Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon. The music is influenced by the sounds of modern classical composition, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Muse, Animal Collective, the Stranger Things soundtrack, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. 

Inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s “1m3 light” and Leo Villarreal’s “Star Ceiling,” “Cube of Light” is centered around the idea of artistic reflection and the journey of light through space, time, and consciousness.  

“Cube of Light” can be experienced as a stereo audio album, a Dolby Atmos immersive audio multimedia installation, as a continuous looping multimedia work, as stand-alone music videos, or as a live performance with full symphony orchestra, wind symphony, or chamber ensemble.

The seven music videos which comprise the visual side of the album were choreographed by Hui Cha Poos, Maggie Boyett, Audrey Johnston, Tina Kambour, Austin Nieves, and Kim Loveridge. 

WUBWUBWUB is a four movement double concerto for violin, clarinet, and orchestra. 

Each of the four movements (I. Loop, II. Delay, III. Sample, IV. All-In) refer to electronic music techniques created by analog and digital equipment and primarily used in non-classical genres. This concerto plays with these electronic and analog techniques by recreating their sonic qualities through purely acoustic orchestration.

I. Loop, the first movement, focuses on the use of looping pedals and stacking multiple melodic lines to create interlocking melodies and grooves that grow in complexity as each layer is added. !e piece begins with the violin and clarinet playing a series of notes and rhythms that are looped by the orchestra. This builds to a drop into the B section, where trap rhythms, synth stacking, power chords, and arpeggiators are emulated. Inspired by Moondog, DJ Shadow, and Steve Reich.

II. Delay emulates a eight-note tap delay in the pizzicato solo violin, with the clarinet providing melodic flourishes on top, culminating in a duet that increases in intensity until the next section. Here, a slap delay is emulated by ricochet violin strokes and woodwind double tonguing, and the two soloists trade solos in an improvisatory manner. The movement ends with a simple, beautiful soundscape that acts as a breath of fresh air between sonic complexities. Inspired by Andrew Bird, Stephane Grappelli, and Samuel Barber.

III. Sample reharmonizes and transfigures dozens of classical music melody samples over a continuous violin “beat,” along with a melody that emulates a pop vocal line. This eventually builds to a chamber sextet, a duo-cadenza, and a coda that leads straight into the final movement. Heavily inspired by Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, with quotes from Rachmaninoff, Bach, Sibelius, Messiaen, Schoenberg, and more.

IV. All-In recalls all these techniques and molds them together into a climactic finish. Inspired by Zedd, Zomboy, Messiaen, John Adams, and Philip Glass.

WUBWUBWUB is a four movement double concerto for amplified violin, amplified clarinet, and wind symphony. 

Each of the four movements (I. Loop, II. Delay, III. Sample, IV. All-In) refer to electronic music techniques created by analog and digital equipment and primarily used in non-classical genres. This concerto plays with these electronic and analog techniques by recreating their sonic qualities through purely acoustic orchestration.

I. Loop, the first movement, focuses on the use of looping pedals and stacking multiple melodic lines to create interlocking melodies and grooves that grow in complexity as each layer is added. !e piece begins with the violin and clarinet playing a series of notes and rhythms that are looped by the orchestra. This builds to a drop into the B section, where trap rhythms, synth stacking, power chords, and arpeggiators are emulated. Inspired by Moondog, DJ Shadow, and Steve Reich.

II. Delay emulates a eight-note tap delay in the pizzicato solo violin, with the clarinet providing melodic flourishes on top, culminating in a duet that increases in intensity until the next section. Here, a slap delay is emulated by ricochet violin strokes and woodwind double tonguing, and the two soloists trade solos in an improvisatory manner. The movement ends with a simple, beautiful soundscape that acts as a breath of fresh air between sonic complexities. Inspired by Andrew Bird, Stephane Grappelli, and Samuel Barber.

III. Sample reharmonizes and transfigures dozens of classical music melody samples over a continuous violin “beat,” along with a melody that emulates a pop vocal line. This eventually builds to a chamber sextet, a duo-cadenza, and a coda that leads straight into the final movement. Heavily inspired by Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, with quotes from Rachmaninoff, Bach, Sibelius, Messiaen, Schoenberg, and more.

IV. All-In recalls all these techniques and molds them together into a climactic finish. Inspired by Zedd, Zomboy, Messiaen, John Adams, and Philip Glass.

LISTEN

Broad is the Road that Leads to Death is a Fa-So-La or shape note hymn that was popular in the 18th century in the Southern United States of America. Taught in singing schools, these hymns utilized unique chord voicings and powerful vocal techniques that embrace passion over training. Banished from New England and Eastern Canada by the Better Music Movement in the 1830s, shape note singing continued to flourish in rural communities in the American South. 

Shape note singing is currently undergoing a renaissance in Canada and the United States, with new singing groups revitalizing this historical singing style for a new generation. 

The string quartet and clarinet quartet emulate the four voices of Fa-So-La harmony: treble, alto, tenor, and bass, with the tenor often taking the melody and multiple octaves reinforcing each part. 

This composition is a theme and variations that attempts to follow the lineage of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and George Crumb’s Black Angels, both of which are quoted in the work. The variations alternate between Schubert-like explorations of meter and mode and Crumb-like explorations of unmetered, gestural motifs.  

LISTEN

Written for the Devil Sticks quartet in 2018, Radio Static is structured as a series of sections and transitions meant to embody the sonic soundscape and psychoacoustic feeling of driving through a mountainous countryside and hearing different radio stations come in and out of focus on a car stereo. The piece begins and ends on a single tone meant to evoke the distinctive sound that old tube amplifiers make when turned on. Canadian-American composer Patrick Conlon explores pitch bending, timbral fingerings, and stereo-spatial effects to create a sense of static crossing into organized sound and back.

Retro Rhapsody is an 11 minute long piece for Bb clarinet and 2-channel live electronic accompaniment performed through either Ableton Live or MaxMSP Runtime. The electronic part is performed by cueing a series of samples notated sequentially in the score and visually laid out in an easy to use interface in either program. 

The clarinet can optionally be miked and mixed into the speaker output.

Each sample has a fair amount of wiggle room to allow the clarinettist to push or pull the tempo as he or she wishes. The operator at the computer should follow the score and trigger the numbered sample when the clarinettist reaches that point in the notated music.

Mirror Sermon is based on anti-apartheid hero and activist Dennis Brutus’s poem of the same name. Dennis Brutus is more commonly known for his activism than his poetry - forcing the western powers to ban apartheid South Africa from the Olympic Games, getting shot in the back while trying to escape imprisonment, and spending 16 months at Robben Island in a cell next to Nelson Mandela.

I first found Dennis Brutus’s poetry following his death in 2009. The poems in his book Sirens, Knuckles, Boots present a personal and visceral insight into a torn relationship with his homeland that I found fascinating and moving. The specific poem that this work is based on, Mirror Sermon, struck me as almost overwhelmingly musical. He mentions slow sarabandes, cacophonous gavottes, graceless dances, writhing arabesques, mirrored images, and jerking strings. I knew I had to set it to music.

While the setting is purposely imperfect (for example, there are no actual gavottes or arabesques, and the sarabande occurs in the wrong place) the structure of the quartet is intimately tied to the poem. The “cold reflection” and “interlocking nudity” of the unaccompanied viola and cello at the beginning, the cavorting in “graceless dance” of the line that is eventually taken over by the violin and cello, the “twitching strings of lust” in the first violin cadenza, the “flat-two dimensional” sarabande that unfolds at measure, the “grotesque”, dance of the septuplet violin line that is a broken repetition of the violin cadenza, the cadenza’s pale remembrance of the earlier motives, and the finale’s “macabre dance of death” are all directly influenced by the poem.

Since the poem is based on a reflection that is slowly revealed to be more and more horrifying and changed, everything in the quartet is based on the initial motif presented by the viola. All of these alterations continue to swirl around themselves, developing and changing until they are finally crystallized in furious concert in the final macabre dance of death.

LISTEN

Mirror Sermon is based on anti-apartheid hero and activist Dennis Brutus’s poem of the same name. Dennis Brutus is more commonly known for his activism than his poetry - forcing the western powers to ban apartheid South Africa from the Olympic Games, getting shot in the back while trying to escape imprisonment, and spending 16 months at Robben Island in a cell next to Nelson Mandela.

I first found Dennis Brutus’s poetry following his death in 2009. The poems in his book Sirens, Knuckles, Boots present a personal and visceral insight into a torn relationship with his homeland that I found fascinating and moving. The specific poem that this work is based on, Mirror Sermon, struck me as almost overwhelmingly musical. He mentions slow sarabandes, cacophonous gavottes, graceless dances, writhing arabesques, mirrored images, and jerking strings. I knew I had to set it to music.

While the setting is purposely imperfect (for example, there are no actual gavottes or arabesques, and the sarabande occurs in the wrong place) the structure of the quartet is intimately tied to the poem. The “cold reflection” and “interlocking nudity” of the unaccompanied clarinet and cello at the beginning, the cavorting in “graceless dance” of the flute line that is eventually taken over by the violin and cello, the “twitching strings of lust” in the first violin cadenza, the “flat-two dimensional” sarabande that unfolds at measure, the “grotesque”, dance of the septuplet violin line that is a broken repetition of the violin cadenza, the cadenza’s pale remembrance of the earlier motives, and the finale’s “macabre dance of death” are all directly influenced by the poem.

Since the poem is based on a reflection that is slowly revealed to be more and more horrifying and changed, everything in the quartet is based on the initial motif presented by the viola. All of these alterations continue to swirl around themselves, developing and changing until they are finally crystallized in furious concert in the final macabre dance of death.

A whimsical setting of e. e. cumming’s poem of the same name. Written for the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble.

A post-minimalist chamber piece that examines beauty and joy. Written for the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble.