I wrote this piece for the choir of West Suburban Community Church in Elmhurst, Illinois, for the dedication of their new building.  The text is my adaptation of I Chronicles 29:10-14 and 18.

A polystylistic cycle of seven songs on texts from Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The ensemble consists of string quartet, double bass, flute (doubling ocarina) and alto saxophone (doubling soprano).

The first song written ended up being the sixth movement, “Sunrise Over Sqornshellous Zeta.”  This is the opening of a chapter with some humorous language describing a sunrise, and whole day of sunshine, in a wonderful alternation between flowery and scientific language.  This is the setup for a great dialogue between a robot and a mattress, but I decided only to set texts that were more narrative, since it was for solo voice.  There is a delicate balance in this movement between a majestic optimism and a more explicit hopelessness.

Several other movements were written concurrently.  There is a jazz movement (“Two Theories”), a classical movement (“Teleportation Ditty”), several with extended tonality, and a set-theory atonal movement.  “Two Theories” takes a text from the prologue to one of the books, and “Epilogue” uses the title of one of the books as its text.  “Major Problems” is special because it uses nothing but pizzicato strings and ocarina in the accompaniment.

There is a bit of hidden numerological symbolism in the movement called “Pralite Mental Control Techniques.”  The number 42 is important in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books as the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Unfortunately, nobody knows what the question is, but a distortion of the question shows up in the human race as “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”  42 is, of course, actually the product of six and seven.  My piece uses a set of six pitches, and the singer, representing humanity, uses those pitches at nine transpositions, while the instruments, representing the real question, use only seven transpositions, cycling backwards through those seven while the singer sings his final two.  This is why the last two phrases of this movement sound a little more dissonant than the rest.

To Heal the Land was written as my doctoral dissertation.  It is an oratorio-like piece about the relationship between the Christian faith and the environment of planet Earth.  I wrote the text myself, and it includes several Biblical quotations and paraphrases.  The two soloists ("Man" and "Woman" - both are medium-range voices) take opposite positions on the questions of how Christians ought to care for God's creation, with the chorus moderating the debate.  The piece is in three movements, with a total duration of around 40 minutes.  The orchestra consists of 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, saxophone, horn, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 4 percussionists, piano and strings.  The string sections should be of chamber-orchestra size.

I wrote this song as a personal devotional.  The text is by 17th century American poet Anne Bradstreet.

This is a setting of the 1917 poem Trees by William Carlos Williams.  The poem contains several musical metaphors, which I have attempted to introduce literally in the accompaniment.  The ensemble includes clarinet, violin, electric bass (or double bass) and piano.