Musical Compositions

I started playing trumpet when I was about twelve years old. I was never very good at the instrument but I can say that marching down the street in a band playing snappy marches was an early experience of ecstasy for me. Some years later I took up guitar, which led me to a brief career as a rock 'n' roll musician in a band called The Shrews (Well, we were from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts). A few years after graduating from Mass College of Art I took up the study of music more seriously. In the late 1970s I had the good fortune to receive lessons in jazz improvisation from the late Charlie Banacos, a highly sought-after musician and master teacher. During those same years I studied composition and music analysis with the contemporary composer Richard St. Clair, who conducted small private classes in his home. I read with interest that St. Clair became a Buddhist practitioner during the 1990s and has written compositions based on Buddhist texts. Both Banacos and St. Clair were influenced by Margaret Chaloff, who was then in her eighties. I had the good fortune to meet her myself. While I wasn't able to study piano with her, my two personal interviews with her were life-changing. She approached art and life at the most profound level. Around 1980 I became friends with the late composer Peter Lieberson, whose kindness and instructions remain with me today.

In 2001, after quite a few years of musical inactivity, I returned to the keyboard and began learning the varied and marvelous possibilities of digital music composition. I'm including here a few samples of that engagement. I expect I'll be adding to this page from time to time, since I'm experimenting continuously.

In addition to the pieces on this page, you will find new work added each month in the Moonblog.