Hello from Brooklyn
Found a proper workspace close to home in Dumbo (that’s Brooklyn). That’s the Manhattan Bridge footpath right outside the window (👋).
You might still catch me lurking at the library from time to time as well.
Projects:
Alarm Will Sound’s long-awaited Acoustica follow-up is coming out this year. This is now well over a decade in the making and it is finally done and heading to mastering. I contributed in several ways: a co-arrangement of my track Hanabi with our bassist Miles Brown, full arrangements of Aphex Twin’s minipops and Gameshow Outpatient’s Vole Sweeps Up!, percussion arrangement for Jlin’s Black Origami, and I also played percussion on the whole record.
I wrote a very intense blog, called Music and Math and Feelings weekly for a year. It was a good experience and I got a lot of stuff off my chest, which will continue to live there indefinitely for your perusal. Like, for example:
one very phyllotaxonomic interpretation of the gravitational pull toward scales with five, seven, or twelve notes.
a guided video tour of making lissajous curves and an oscilloscope cover of Avril 14th by Aphex Twin.
an overshare-y homage to The Just Intonation Primer and a very very special interview with Just Intonation themself.
an anniversary megapost with fifty-two interesting music recommendations
premiere of Symmetric Palaces, my new work for justly tuned piano
an exploration of Henry Cowell’s “rhythmicon,” and whimsical (yet thorough!) animated analysis of Nancarrow’s Study #6 for player piano.
a five-part epic on organizing music with lattices.
Gigs:
I’ll be doing Hans Thomalla’s Harmoniemusic at the Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago on October 24th with Alarm Will Sound.
Heading to San Francisco for Nippon Kobo: Music + Culture of Contemporary Japan on November 2 — mostly as a fan, but will also participate in a performance of Orbit by Kotoka Suzuki.
Back to Japan for a couple weeks at the end of November!
Broadway: Back to the Future closed in January, which means my current percussion subbing includes only Wicked for now. I’ve been playing Wicked on Broadway as a guest percussionist off and on for sixteen years now and my honest assessment of the movie is that I loved it and was so glad it was extremely faithful to the show except they made the flying monkeys all evil at the end which is just wrong. The monkeys are kind, gentle creatures who are misunderstood because of their appearance and thus metaphorical mirror-images of Elphaba herself. Obviously. Also way too much CGI.
This is where the social media links used to be. If you would like to get friendly updates on interesting gigs and official music releases via email a few times a year, you can just email me and I’ll add you to that list.