Last night's performance of "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky at Benaroya was amazing. They opened up with Scriabin's "The Poem of Ecstasy" which I had never heard and is now in my heart. A truly dazzling and dynamic work.

Prior to intermission, we were treated to...

The following is an excerpt from a response email to a student after our lesson that included an exercise I call the "Hey Ride." I use the word "bellowing" to describe the sound that one aims to create in this exercise. Even though the word has Middle English origins m...

This is for those practicing instruments of any kind, including the voice.

There are 168 hours in a week. I usually get to see a student for only one of those hours. And although a great lesson can be a liberating experience with lasting benefits (don’t you love those?)...

Highlander: Hans Kirschner is a fully-licensed, fan-fiction short film directed by Andrew Modeen and features my original music. Andrew was a real pleasure to work with. It was clear right from the get-go that we both had that liberating sense of faith in each other's...

[The following is an excerpt from the introduction for my voice class given at the Westlake Dance Center in the fall of 2017, a class which I chose to call "Vocal Unity." I have also attached an unedited video in which I speak at length about the voice. It is, perhaps,...

In the summer of 2014, my boss at the Seattle School of Rock got a call from one of the moms of the school, Gayle Scherrer, who also happened to be the Life Enrichment Coordinator at Chateau Bothell Landing, a retirement community for senior citizens. Gayle wanted to k...

Other than the fact that he is an international phenomenon and has much better hair, Eric Whitacre is a lot like me. We both are composers, born in the early 70's in the US, were raised in secular households, wanted to be in Depeche Mode when were teens, and still want...

When I was still living in Chicago, a friend of mine and I boarded a bus near Buena and North Broadway. I don't remember where we were heading, but we paid our fares and continued our conversation. We sat on the seats near the front that face each other. There was a wo...