I’m back in Dumbo
Now living, working, and practicing in Dumbo for the first time since way back in 2013! You might still catch me lurking in my favorite library from time to time as well.
For the past year I’ve been really focused on my blog Music and Math and Feelings, and have managed to get a backlog of a basquillion ideas and thoughts off my chest. It’s been so nice to have that destination for music, videos, and essays. It continues, with slightly less frequency and more focus on releasing new music.
Alarm Will Sound is going strong into our twenty-fifth anniversary year and has I think five different albums in the pipeline for release in the next year or two. The live performance schedule thankfully hasn’t taken a huge hit given the state of the arts in this country but I am more available for guest playing opportunities than usual and excited to get out there.
Back to the Future closed in January, which means my current percussion subbing includes only Wicked for now.
I’ve disengaged with all the social media, although I still occasionally drop something there in an attempt to help people find my substack, which I work really hard on! Is Substack social media? Yup, more and more every day. Going forward the plan is to stick with this website, my bandcamp, and mailing lists. I’m toying with the idea of taking my catalog down from the streaming services but… you’ll tell me if that’s cutting off my nose to spite my face, right? I’m really just hoping you’ll buy some (physical or digital) albums. T h e y d o n ’ t e v e n h a v e t o b e m i n e !
Projects:
I’m making a new arrangement of Fractionally Souled Beasts for six percussionists. Looking for new percussion ensemble rep? Email me! This is a weird, groovy, rhythmically challenging piece that was originally for four justly-tuned pianos. This new version will be for marimba, two vibraphones, and piano four-hands (all parts designed to be played by percussionists). An outlier in my repertoire, in that it will require no tech (click, playback, tape, etc) only instruments and performers.
Alarm Will Sound’s long-awaited Acoustica follow-up is coming out this year, and we will be putting the finishing touches on mixes in the next couple weeks. 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’ve just crossed the one-year mark with my blog Music and Math and Feelings. Some recent posts:
a guided video tour of making lissajous curves and an oscilloscope cover of Avril 14th by Aphex Twin.
an anniversary megapost with fifty-two interesting music recommendations
Symmetric Palaces, a new work for justly tuned piano.
Continuing to explore multi-dimensional models of pitch space, and use them to write music using microtonal scales. This involves deep-diving the Wilson Archives, and playing with Zome Tool, which is possibly the coolest toy I never had as a kid?
Gigs:
Alarm Will Sound is at Merkin Hall in NYC next week, performing with Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. Here’s all the deets. I’m also breathlessly excited to start workshopping new music for our ensemble by Paul Swartzel, who’s music is wonderful and who has one of the best websites on the internet.
Just finished a week as a guest percussionist with the Knights at Zankel Hall, which gave me an excellent opportunity to absolutely fan-boy out on a collab between Christina Courtin and Alex Sopp.
Doing John Luther Adams Ten Thousand Birds at St. Louis City Museum June 21st with Alarm Will Sound.
Broadway: 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.
Travel:
I’ll be in Japan the first two weeks of June! My first time back since 2009. In fact, since the last time I visited I’ve a) spent five years becoming semi-proficient in japanese, and then b) spent five years completely forgetting it all. Already on the itinerary: Naoshima Island and also Super Potato. Please say hi if you have any secrets to share that are within a day journey from Tokyo.
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.