Showcase Works
Vox Clamantis in Nemore
Clarinet and Electronics | 2025 | 9'
Composed for Ford Fourqurean
Winner, Mise-en Festival Call for Scores
Honorable Mention, Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition
Selected performances:
Ford Fourqurean. Philippines tour, July 2026.
Laura Grantier. SEAMUS National Conference, Concert 11. University of Texas San Antonio, May 21, 2026.
Ford Fourqurean. COPE Fest, New York City, March 25, 2026.
Richard Faria. Faculty Recital, Hockett Family Recital Hall, Ithaca College, March 7, 2026.
Ford Fourqurean. Click Fest, Ohio University, Oct. 4, 2025
Ford Fourqurean. Thailand tour: Price’s Royal College, Chiang Mai, May 30; Kasetsart University, Bangkok, May 29; Madihol University, Bangkok, May 28.
Ford Fourqurean. Dialogues//Cloud Burst. Opera America, New York, NY, April 27, 2025.
Vox Clamantis in Nemore translates to "a voice crying in the forest." Referencing the
biblical phrase vox clamantis in deserto—an unheeded, prophetic voice—the piece explores what is being lost as forests vanish across our world. The clarinet begins as the voice of an undisturbed woodland. This calm natural world is soon interrupted by the sounds of industry, representing human encroachment on and destruction of this fragile ecosystem. The clarinet responds with urgent cries that grow as the music reaches a powerful climax. At the end, the fading sound of a train blends with a forest stream as the music from the opening returns. The ending remains ambiguous: perhaps nature finds a way to endure, or perhaps these are the last echoes of something beautiful that is fading away forever.
Qui Confidunt in Domino
SSAATTBB | 2016 | 5'
Winner, Khorikos ORTUS International New Music Competition
Past performances:
Khorikos, cond. Alec Galambos. “The 4th ORTUS International New Music Competition.” St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, NY, October 8, 2022.
NOTUS IU Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, cond. Dominick DiOrio. “The Solitude of the Spirit.” Auer Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, Apr. 10, 2018.
Premiered by The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, cond. Gregory Glenn. Mass in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Madeleine Choir School. Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 13, 2016.
This piece is based on a Gregorian chant that appears, almost in its entirety, in the Alto I line.
The text translates as: Those who trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Sion: they shall not be moved for ever. Just as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth now and forever.
Equi-Nox
Flute, clarinet, horn, harp, piano, violin, and cello | 2021 | 8’
Composed for the Inaugural Concert of Become New Music
Premiere:
Savannah Gentry, flute; Kathryn Vetter, clarinet; Kathryn Sloat, harp; Alice Chuaqui Baldwin, piano; Joenne Dumitrascu, violin; Weiting Sun, cello. Cond. Nicolas Chuaqui. Become New Music. “Time After Time.” Marc A. Scorca Hall, Opera America’s National Opera Center, New York, May 17, 2023.
The word “Equinox” derives from Latin and roughly translates as “equal night;” daytime and nighttime are approximately equal in duration everywhere on Earth, at twelve hours each. My piece is divided similarly into two movements, but the movements do not represent depictions of daytime and nighttime. Neither do they necessarily represent springtime and autumn (the March and September equinoxes), although these play a role. They are both “night” music, in that they are fantasies on the magic of night—playing among anticipation, concealment, and obscurity. They are also celebrations of the moment of balance, alignment, and pause found at the equinox. This is, however, a fleeting moment of balance— hastened, on the one hand, by the quickening energy growing beneath the snow in March, and on the other hand, by the inevitability of decay in the September air.
Cantus
2.2.2.2-3.2.2.1-timp.-2pc.-hp.-strings | 2021 | 15’
Winner, Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize (Eastman School of Music)
Past Performances:
Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, cond. Grant O’Brien. “Storytellers.” Kodak Hall, Eastman School of Music, Feb. 23, 2022.
Eastman Philharmonia (reading), cond. Maurice Cohn. May 5, 2021.
Cantus is a work for orchestra set in four movements, played attacca.
The work's title draws connections to Gregorian Chant and all the images therein—especially life and eternity. The title is also an oblique reference to Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten; much of the work was composed in reaction to the untimely death of a person close to the composer.
Like the Pärt, the work places clear melodic ideas in changing contrapuntal arrangements, although it does so in a vastly different way. The concept of a "cantus" is also expanded throughout the work's four movements, becoming, for instance, a short motif in the scherzo- like second movement.
In the third and fourth movements, recollections and re-examinations of earlier music play key roles in bringing the arc of the work to a close. The piece ultimately ends enigmatically, fading into an uncertain conclusion that is nevertheless befitting of the emotions explored.
Born as Water
Stereo fixed media with video | 2026 | 7:57
Premiere:
New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Concert 9. Loreto Theater, Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, New York, Jun. 21, 2026.
Born as Water is a video piece that uses footage of rock, water, and trees. These elements are not symbols to decode but are rather direct evidence of something we already sense but keep forgetting: meaning is not a destination we arrive at, but a quality of attention we bring to what's already here. We spend most of our lives constructing narratives to make the world legible, to feel like we're getting somewhere, and in doing so we skip past the very texture of being alive. Born as Water suggests that the meaning we're looking for might not be something we find but something we stop obscuring. This meaning has been present all along in the unedited, unhurried surface of the world, and that the real work isn't searching but learning to look without needing what we see to add up.