Prior to moving to Los Angeles in 1984, I studied composition with Dr. Edith Smith and theory with Dr. Norma Butcher at Orange Coast College. I decided to move to Los Angeles to continue my music education. I completed the arranging and composition course at the Grove School in Los Angeles. I studied composition with David Angel at Grove as well as privately. I also studied privately with Hugo Davise. During this time I composed film scores for student films at the University of Southern California Film School, but chose not to pursue a commercial music career. I was a founding member of the Composers Group and gave concerts and recitals in Los Angeles with and without the group from 1990 to 1992, frequently conducting my work. In August 1992 I left Los Angeles to go to Europe.
I lived in Central Europe for three years. During that time I studied privately with Professor Marian Borkowski at the Warsaw Conservatory. From 1993 to 1995 I wrote four large compositions: Contrabass and Piano, Violin and Piano, Flute and Piano, and a Piano Trio. The Contrabass and Piano composition was performed in Berlin in 1994 and the Flute and Piano composition was performed at the Prague Conservatory in February 1994. In June 1994 I attended master classes with George Crumb in Prague. Since 1995 I have focused mainly on composition and have completed several pieces for mixed brass, various percussion compositions, an oboe solo and a suite for solo tuba. I have learned much of what I know by writing pieces, producing their performance and discussing them with the musicians. I have mainly composed atonal, serial music for small groups and soloists. I feel that this type of chamber music is the best expression for my compositions.
While in Europe, I also began to work with the idea of a sonic collage. These pieces are composed of ambient and directed sound. I made tapes of the sounds I heard daily in Prague, Czech Republic and Portland, Oregon and sounds made on the strings and soundboard of a piano, and blended them with text.
I began to work with layers of sound and text in 1986 when I created Kirtan 10/17/86 and later Kirtan 2/28/87. For these collages, I used Sanskrit text from the “Bhagavadgita” and conducted musical and percussive motifs around it. I further developed this work in 1994 in Prague for a staged reading of a play. There were four actors, and the director gave each their own cassette player with instruction to raise and lower the volume as they felt appropriate. I titled this piece “Music for four tape players” and sent it to a dancer, Gregg Bieleimeier, in Portland, Oregon, who performed it at the Portland art museum in February of 1995, where it was well received. It is my intention in these pieces to create an aural collage.
In 1996, after a brief stint in Almaty, Kazakhstan, I returned to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon for a year. While there, I wrote several works for ensembles and obtained the rights from the copyright holder to use the texts of Bruno Schulz’s stories “The Gale”, “The Street of Crocodiles”, “August”, and “Cinnamon Shops.” In 1996 and 1997, I made two more four tape sonic collages that included the text of two stories by Bruno Schulz: “The Gale” and “Street of Crocodiles.” In 2000 I mixed these pieces onto tape at the Emmons Studio in Los Angeles. I hope to complete “August” and “Cinnamon Shops” in 2002.
In 1997 I returned to Los Angeles and began to compose a piece for solo tuba. Partly composed and partly free improvisation, this piece was composed for and performed by William Roper, a prominent free lance tubaist. It was recorded in 1998. My composition, Kirtan 1987, was broadcast and archived on Art@Radio at the University of Maryland.
In the winter of 2000, my composition for solo tuba, Paths and Destinations, was published by Bayside Music Press. I spent April 2000 as composer in residence at the Fundacíon Valparaíso in southern Spain, where I worked on my Viola Quartet. I am currently employed as an editorial assistant at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and write as much music as possible when not working there.