Reg­u­lar read­ers will recall the ‘80s col­lage piece I was work­ing on in 2008. I’ve since put together a pro­mo­tional web­site for the pro­ject, and have started plan­ning a West Coast tour of North Amer­ica, ten­ta­tively slot­ted for late 2010. More infor­ma­tion as it be­comes avail­able, posted here and at recycled80slive.com.

I was asked to be the Com­po­si­tion Fellow for this year’s Cham­ber Music Con­fer­ence and Composers’ Forum of the East in Ben­ning­ton, Ver­mont this July. As the Com­po­si­tion Fellow, I will be work­ing with com­posers Lisa Bielawa and Donald Crock­ett, take part in rehearsals, and pre­mière a new adap­ta­tion of one of my works, to be writ­ten for the con­fer­ence participants.

A long-term pro­ject of mine is moving for­ward this year. Tapes­try New Opera applied for and received fund­ing from Opera.ca to pro­duce the first act of the opera I have been devel­op­ing with libret­tist, Colleen Murphy. We’ll be involved in round­table dis­cus­sions on the opera in Toronto this spring, and I will be com­pos­ing the music for one act of the opera, to be work­shopped at the Banff Centre in August of this year. The act will then be fully pro­duced in the first part of 2010. More details to fol­low as they become avail­able.

I was com­mis­sioned this year by New Works Cal­gary to write a piece for their res­i­dent group, Ensem­ble Res­o­nance. The piece—for soprano, violin, bass clar­inet, and piano—will be pre­mièred in Novem­ber, and I’ll post spe­cific per­for­mance details closer to then, in the Per­for­mances sec­tion. In terms of theme, I’m plan­ning on put­ting to­geth­er a mul­ti­lin­gual text that looks at the nuances of the word kiss in cul­tures from around the world.

I’m pleased and excited to announce that I was declared the winner of this year’s annual Young Com­posers Meet­ing in the Nether­lands, hosted by renowned Dutch ensem­ble, orkest de ereprijs. The jurors chose between 16 pieces that the invited com­posers wrote for the ensem­ble. My piece, Love in the Time of Con­nec­tiv­ity, was a col­lage of approx­i­mately a dozen other pieces, with sources rang­ing from Claude Debussy to Pizzi­cato Five. I’ll be writ­ing another piece for the ensem­ble, to be per­formed in 2010.

Amer­i­can com­poser Char­lie Wil­moth wrote an arti­cle on me and my music, which appeared today in Dusted Mag­a­zine. It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing for me to see how other peo­ple inter­pret what I do. Char­lie does a great job of encap­su­lat­ing sev­eral of the themes that are impor­tant to my work with his insight­ful com­men­tary. Thanks, Char­lie!

I was pleased to find recently that I was fea­tured on Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal blog, Sequenza21.com. Amer­i­can com­poser Steve Layton wrote an arti­cle on the Cana­dian Music Centre, in which he named me as one of his favourite Cana­dian com­posers, along­side the likes of Claude Vivier and John Rea.

This year is off to a busy start, with two pre­mières in Feb­ru­ary. One is a col­lage piece based on love songs, for the orkest de ereprijs in Hol­land. The other piece, for soprano and speak­ing pianist, is based on spam email texts and is being pre­mièred in Toronto’s SHIFT Fes­ti­val by pianist Greg Oh and soprano Xin Wang.

In addi­tion, I’m work­ing on a piece for Brazilian-Canadian pianist, Luciane Car­dassi, which will involve elec­tron­ics and her voice (in addi­tion to her piano play­ing). I’m also work­ing on a col­lab­o­ra­tive mul­ti­me­dia piece with Amsterdam-based flautist/composer Anne La Berge.

Lastly, after a suc­cess­ful pre­mière in Banff last month, I’m putting together mate­ri­als based on Recy­cled 80s Live, which will be acces­si­ble here once they’re ready. I’m cur­rently in the plan­ning phases for an even­tual tour of the piece; details TBA as they become avail­able.

If you’re in the Banff or Cal­gary area, come out to the pre­mière of my new pro­ject. Also pass this along to your friends.

For those liv­ing too far away to attend, a pro­ject web­site is in the works, with video and audio clips, slated for early 2009.

I’m very excited to announce that I was awarded a Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of Alberta Emerg­ing Artist Award this year. This is a high-profile, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary award, given out every other year to early-career artists from Alberta in all dis­ci­plines. In the news release for the award, the jury described me as “an artist in full com­mand of his tech­nique whose com­po­si­tions are most orig­i­nal and inven­tive, very sophis­ti­cated and intel­lec­tu­ally engag­ing”. It’s very grat­i­fy­ing to be given recog­ni­tion of this kind for my work.

I’m happy to say I was awarded another SOCAN Award this year, for Cul­ture no.3.

Also, in other news, work on the night­club project, now titled Recy­cled 80s Live, is pro­gress­ing well. The first per­for­mance will take place at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Decem­ber, and a project web­site and media clips should be avail­able shortly there­after. Fur­ther per­for­mances in 2009 are in the plan­ning stages.

Lastly, be sure to check the Per­for­mances sec­tion for upcom­ing concerts.

Some excit­ing news. I’ve received fund­ing to develop a musi­cal project that I have been plan­ning for sev­eral years. It involves writ­ing an evening-length piece for ampli­fied instru­ments, to be per­formed in non-traditional venues such as night­clubs. This is a large-scale project that I will be work­ing on over the remain­der of the year. More infor­ma­tion to be posted as the work progresses.

I’ve updated the web­site with info on some upcom­ing per­for­mances.

I’ve been very busy in Hol­land, com­pos­ing like crazy. Sev­eral pieces recently fin­ished for var­i­ous projects. I’ve updated var­i­ous pages on the site to reflect more cur­rrent infor­ma­tion and hope to give more details as soon as pos­si­ble. Stay tuned!

I have posted the three papers from my UCSD Master’s port­fo­lio in a new sec­tion. There are abstracts and PDF ver­sions of the papers at the link above. In other news, I have been busy com­pos­ing and prepar­ing to move to the Nether­lands in the fall. More infor­ma­tion to follow.

I’ve now offi­cially com­pleted my Master’s degree at UC San Diego. The last two years have been a lot of fun, edu­ca­tional, eventful… also really busy! I’m look­ing for­ward to seeing what the future holds. I’ve taken a major pro­fes­sional chal­lenge for the short term by decid­ing against purs­ing a doc­toral degree, at least imme­di­ately. Sev­eral plans are in the works, as well as projects stretch­ing into 2008 and beyond. One of these is that I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Domaine Forget Academy’s pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment ses­sion in Quebec this summer, from 12–25 August. More details on other projects as they become avail­able.

I’ve posted a couple of blog entries on my MySpace page, having to do with the phi­los­o­phy of music. One deals with the value of music in soci­ety today, the other with the eco­log­i­cal effects of music, and how the energy crisis will change the sound of our music. On a sim­i­lar note, I intend even­tu­ally to post some of my Master’s port­fo­lio papers here, which deal with related topics, once I’ve fin­ished my degree this summer. Stay tuned.

Now that the Arditti res­i­dency is over and I have fin­ished the numer­ous grants/applications/papers that were due over the course of Feb­ru­ary, I have made some long-overdue updates. Cleaned up my MySpace page too. I’ll post some new record­ings there over the next couple of months. More infor­ma­tion to come on var­i­ous projects in the works.

Too much to do! There’s been a lot going on, and I haven’t had time to post any of it here. Check back soon for more.

If you missed it before or want to hear it again, Cul­ture no.3 will be broad­cast on Radio-Canada’s Espace Musique at 8:00pm on Thurs­day 7 Decem­ber. As with the CBC, you can also listen online.

My piece Culture no.3 will be pre­sented on CBC Radio 2’s Two New Hours this Sunday, for those who missed the Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Montréal’s con­certs ear­lier this month or would like to hear it again. Here is the broad­cast info:

Sunday 5 Novem­ber 2006, 10:00pm-12:00am, CBC Radio 2

Check their web­site for your local broad­cast fre­quency. If you’re not in Canada or don’t have a radio, you can also listen to the CBC online by fol­low­ing the link above.

I’ve put up the record­ing of Cul­ture no.1 from Gaudea­mus on my Myspace page. It’s not on this web­site yet because I haven’t fig­ured out how to do stream­ing audio, and I am not able to offer this record­ing for down­load. For the time being, check it out there. You can also rank my music on Myspace… ;-)

Also, in coming weeks, the record­ing of my piece from the ECM tour should be broad­cast on CBC Radio 2’s Two New Hours. I’ll post the broad­cast time when it becomes available.

I’m back in San Diego now after being gone all summer. Just came back from the Gaudea­mus Music Week in Ams­ter­dam, which was a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. I’ll post some pic­tures when I have a minute.

Now it’s time to get ready for the start of the school year and the Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Montréal Tour, for which the dates and venues have been announced. See the link above for details.

I’m excited to have won a first prize in this year’s SOCAN com­pe­ti­tion. Cul­ture no.1 received first place in the Pierre Mer­cure Awards for a solo or duet com­po­si­tion. Inci­den­tally, this is the same piece that was chosen to com­pete for the Gaudea­mus prize in Sep­tem­ber (see entry below).

First of all, a slight change regard­ing the last post­ing. Due to rehearsal sched­ul­ing com­pli­ca­tions, my piece with Esprit’s New Wave Fes­ti­val has been changed. They will be pre­sent­ing Flüsse-Einflüsse instead. Many thanks to Ina Hen­ning for gra­tiously agree­ing to do this on short notice.

Sec­ondly, I am pleased to announce that I was chosen to write a piece for the Arditti Quar­tet during their res­i­dency at UCSD in 2007. The Arditti are one of the most highly-regarded string quar­tets in con­tem­po­rary music and I am more than thrilled to be work­ing with them.

Two news items to report… First of all, I’m pleased to say that I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Esprit Orches­tra’s New Wave Fes­ti­val again this year. They will be doing the harp and piano piece writ­ten for my UCSD jury, which is the same piece being done at Gaudea­mus in Ams­ter­dam. In addi­tion, I’ve been asked to write an orches­tral piece for the 2007 install­ment of the fes­ti­val, which is very excit­ing. I will post more details (as they become avail­able) in the Per­for­mances section.

Things have been very busy, and I haven’t had the chance to do any site updates between teach­ing, taking classes, and trav­el­ling for workshops/performances. I was recently in Montréal for the Ensem­ble contemporain’s work­shop, and I leave next week for the pre­mière of The Enslave­ment and Lib­er­a­tion of Oksana G. with Tapes­try New Opera in Toronto. See the Per­for­mances sec­tion for details.

In addi­tion, one excit­ing piece of news: my first jury piece from UCSD was selected to com­pete in the 2006 Gaudea­mus Music Week in the cham­ber music cat­e­gory. So I’ll be in Ams­ter­dam in early Sep­tem­ber for that.

I have a couple of upcom­ing per­for­mances of note, includ­ing the Tapes­try Opera To Go 2006 series, and my first com­po­si­tion jury at UCSD. I’ve also made some updates to my short bio, the pic­tures sec­tion, and my CV.

I have made some small changes to the site to reflect the pas­sage of time. Noth­ing too excit­ing. How­ever, check back over the next few weeks; I will be adding some news about upcom­ing pre­mières, updat­ing my bio, and hope­fully post­ing some pic­tures of San Diego.

I’m start­ing to get set­tled in San Diego, and have updated con­tact infor­ma­tion to reflect that change. I’ve also posted an upcom­ing per­for­mance by Tapes­try New Opera of two my short opera scenes, for those who will be in the Toronto area. See the per­for­mances sec­tion for details.

The Tapes­try LibLab was a suc­cess and I’ve been pack­ing like mad since then. Now I’m off to San Diego to start my Master’s degree. I’ll post news and updates as I get set­tled into the rou­tine of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Best wishes to every­one back in Toronto.

Wel­come to my newly-opened web­site. Not every­thing is com­pletely fin­ished yet, but the most impor­tant stuff is, and I will be adding the rest as I go. The French and Span­ish ver­sions of the site are long-term projects, so I have no idea yet when they’ll be fin­ished. When I have spare time, I will start work­ing on the trans­la­tions. Until then, it’s English-only.

I was chosen for the 2005 edi­tion of the Tapes­try “LibLab”. We will be writ­ing, rehears­ing, and per­form­ing inten­sive short opera scenes daily in Toronto between August 15-24. There are four com­posers and four libret­tists, and we rotate so that each com­poser works with each libret­tist and vice versa. For more infor­ma­tion, see Tapes­try New Opera.

I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in this workshop/concert tour with the renowned Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Montréal in 2005/2006. There are a series of work­shops in the fall 2005/spring 2006, and then we will be tour­ing across Canada in the fall of 2006. Three other com­posers were chosen besides me, one from BC and two from Québec. The ECM will pre­mière our pieces at each stop. Con­cert details to follow as they become available.