Works in Progress

Lacuna notes in progress...

Jellyfish Engine (2026), for wind ensemble, is the second work in a collection of absurdist wind ensemble pieces exploring surreal systems, impossible objects, and unstable sonic environments. Inspired in part by the music of Aphex Twin and Tigran Hamasyan, the piece combines fluid rhythmic motion, layered interference patterns, and shifting textures that move between mechanical precision and organic instability.

The title joins two seemingly incompatible ideas: the soft, drifting anatomy of a jellyfish and the mechanical force and propulsion of an engine. Musical materials expand, contract, and reconfigure themselves through waves of momentum, suggesting a machine that floats, breaths, flickers, and occasionally malfunctions.

What exactly is a jellyfish engine? Perhaps it is a bioluminescent propulsion system drifting through dark water, a translucent machine powered by tides and electrical impulses, or an impossible organism suspended somewhere between biology and industry. The piece invites listeners to imagine what kinds of worlds, creatures, or strange underwater technologies this music might belong to.

Nimbus (2026), for oboe and stereo electroacoustic music, is a brief exploration of rapt focus—a deep, almost enchanted attention in which the surrounding world falls away. This kind of absorption is not uniquely human; it appears throughout the natural world: moths drawn to flame, the anglerfish's luminous lure drawing prey into its orbit, bodies held in quiet fixation.

The music unfolds in a similarly attentive space. A returning motive acts as a point of refocus—a kind of signal that draws the ear back in. With each return, new details emerge: shifts of color, contour, and gesture revealed through a shifting perspective.

Bestiary Lore III – Griffon (2026), for trumpet and percussion, was composed for Scott Hagarty. It is the third work in a series of duo compositions with percussion inspired by bestiary lore. Drawing from fantasy literature and tabletop role-playing games, a bestiary serves as a compendium of creatures, cataloging their attributes, statistics, behaviors, and lore as part of a larger world.

This work takes inspiration from the griffon—a powerful aerial predator combining the body of a lion with the head and wings of an eagle. Long associated with symbols of authority and nobility, the griffon is, in practice, a calculating hunter, fiercely territorial and deeply loyal to its mate and kin. Across five movements—aerial dominion, circling, the hunt, bound by loyalty, and the aerie—the music traces a progression from suspended observation to sudden action, and from bond to place.

Reflecting this, musical materials shift between spacious, elevated textures and tightly coordinated, impact-driven gestures. Repetition, variation, and abrupt transformation shape a sound world that moves between distance and immediacy, echoing the griffon's dual nature as both mythic symbol and living predator.