I've been composing music since I was in middle school, but it didn't turn into a lifestyle until the spring of 1996, my junior year at West Chester University. As a Music Education major, I took courses in Music Theory. In those classes, we would get composition assignments. I was always eager to experiment with t hose assignments, like a kid who has opened his eyes for the first time and wants to see everything in the world. I wrote one piece for piano and five marching bass drums. Another for three voices that were positioned in various parts of the room. Another that involved a trumpet player playing in the adjacent classroom. Some of these things worked well, and some failed miserably, but I feel that that type of exploration and risk taking was the beginning of my compositional development and stability.
When I got to Music Theory IV with Larry Nelson, my interest for composition and new music hit me in the face. The more I discovered, the more I wanted to know. And yet, I knew that if I stayed in Music Education, Theory IV would be my first and last class with that type of intense exposure to new music. A year later, discontent with Music Education, I switched, with Larry's guidance. And my life as a composer officially began.
For a long time, my life was very unfocused and had no real goals, even with my experiences in drum corps. Although I had learned a lot about motivation and goals in drum corps, establishing those types of goals in my every day life was still an uphill struggle for me, and seemingly going no where. During my sophomore year and first semester junior year in college, my grades had hit an all-time low, and while I cared, I didn't care enough to try to recover.
Once I became a composition major, that changed. I felt really good about what I was achieving, started taking school seriously, and knew for the first time exactly what I wanted to do for the next four or so years of my life. I matured in my perspectives, especially about myself.
I like to think of my portfolio as a representation of my own diverse tastes in music, art, people, and activities. I also see my music as something that is supposed to be personal - not merely personal to me, but to my performers and to my audience.
My life as a composer is best described as a constant discovery - the discovery of music past and present from almost every category imaginable, and how my varied tastes mesh together and mutate to influence my own compositional voice. And this is always an ongoing process, which makes it exciting, for I continue growing, and my compositional voice continually changes. And as we live in a constant state of flux, I would not have it any other way.