Includes excerpts from the following works at these start times:
Full-screen viewing recommended.
Original composition for string quintet, selected for the first Live Session performance by the Academy of Scoring Arts (Los Angeles, CA).
I scored this 56-minute documentary featuring commentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning author/historian David McCullough. Called "sweeping, beautiful and inspiring" (New Urbanism Film Festival), the film highlights the history, achievements, and impact of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation both locally and on the preservation movement in America. I composed the score for the full film (available streaming) as well as the extended trailer (shown at left).
New Urbanism Film Festival (Los Angeles, CA) — Winner: Best Architecture Film
Queen City Film Festival (Cumberland, MD) — Winner: Festival Director's Award
Full-screen viewing recommended.
Soundtrack for short documentary film about a school teaching the primitive arts.
Hampshire College Alumni Reel (Amherst, MA) — Official Selection
Additional screenings: Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY.
This film explores a future in which every citizen serves time in the military, but carries no recall of their actions due to the effects of a memory-suppressing drug. But what happens when the drug fails to work, and memories of battle pierce through the consciousness? I composed the soundtrack and also scored the trailer (shown here).
Different Faces Different Voices Film Festival (Cambridge, MA) — Official Selection
Immersion, blades of death, laser beams, and other perils abound in this epic VR experience.
(Preview coming soon.)
Collaboration with award-winning singer/songwriter Alyse Black (vocals).
Pedal steel guitar by Kim Deschamps (Cowboy Junkies, The Trinity Session).
The Divine Comedy was an exhibition featuring new works by world-famous artists Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Tomás Saraceno. Working with filmmaker Rob Meyer (Honorable Mention at Sundance, Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentaries), I composed a musical accompaniment for videos of each of the three installations. Full-screen viewing recommended.
The exuberant nature of Eliasson's "cabinet of wonders" sculptures called for a playful musical approach in the accompanying video. Around every corner another unconventional wonder to behold, another angle of perception revealed. In Eliasson's purgatory, we are trapped in a world of illusion but kept too busy marveling to notice.
In keeping with the variety of physical forms represented in the film, I incorporated a broad spectrum of acoustic and electronic sounds as might be found arrayed in a tinkerer's workshop. The individual bits vary tremendously but all carry the imprint of the same maker.
The installation consisted of 5,335 backpacks arrayed in stark cube formations, commemorating schoolchildren lost to earthquakes and corruption in Sichuan. Already stark in its representation of the tragedy, this installation took on an even more somber character in the week leading up to the exhibition, when its creator, Ai Weiwei, was detained by Chinese authorities without formal charges. His whereabouts were unknown at the time I was composing the piece and during the run of the exhibition.
What can one do with these truths? The innocence of the children; the distortions and misdirections of the official reports; the ruthless force of gravity — I translated these realities into musical elements only to find myself haunted and devastated by their combined effect.
At once intricate and abstract in form, Saracenoʼs inflatable sculpture embodies a radical elegance in its call to transcend boundaries of nation and politics. There is an energy of potential, a harnessing of power yet-to-be-released.
To portray the inscrutable form musically, I paired a one-chord major statement by string instruments with sound-design elements in a rising non-diatonic motif that casts a sonic shadow across the main theme. We sense its arrival, briefly witness a dream scarcely tethered to reality, and then are left with only a glimmering vision — a possibility to aspire to if we can just hold it in our memory.
I provided the music and audio production for this promo video for the Ecological Urbanism iPad app. The app itself presents an interactive journey through the data and modern discourse surrounding sustainability and urban design, and was a 2013 SXSW Interactive Awards finalist. Full-screen viewing recommended.