Prologue

Whew. It’s been a while. I hope all of you are doing well. Where do I even start?

Thank you. Thank you for such a profound outpouring of support, love, and encouragement throughout these last two months. These have been the hardest two months of my life. Somehow, though, we are still here. Still moving forward. Still putting one foot in front of the other. Baby steps.

My dad passed away in late April. While I was mentally and emotionally preparing myself leading up to his passing, I never quite knew what to expect until we were all on the other side. Navigating this difficult time has been difficult for myself and my family, but we stand together stronger than ever.

Thanks for showing us how to support each other with truly unconditional love, Dad. Until we meet again.

April and May In Review

Because of everything that has happened over the last two months, I haven’t had the chance to do too many musical things. However, I had a composer residency former high school!

I conducted my piece Nightmare Fuel with the San Benito High School Wind Ensemble on May 5, 2025. It was such a fun experience, and I’m really thankful to have experienced that full circle moment. Thanks to Jorge Mujica, pictured above, for helping put all of this together and playing electronics!

I have also started putting the finishing touches on the Stolen Realm Survivors OST! I recently made some subtle inventory and weapon selection tracks. I can’t wait to put this soundtrack out soon enough. If you’re curious on listening to some previews of other tracks, you can listen to them here.

In the life realm of things, we’ve moved back to the Rio Grande Valley! I am excited to call Harlingen, Texas home for the first time since I was seven years old–twenty five years ago! (You really don’t have to do the math.)

While I am very excited to live near family in the RGV again, I can’t help but miss living in Austin. The one year that Iris and I had there was so transformative for us. We saw ourselves living there for a long time, but alas, life had other plans. We’ll still visit every so often for Iris’s job, but I’ll miss going to Desnudo Coffee and Royal Blue Grocery every weekend. Austin will always be the one that got away.

We’re trading Downtown Austin high-rise living for our first rental house together! I look forward to seeing family and lifelong friends much more often, being much closer to many of my collaborators, and having the best tacos anywhere.

Shoutout to my mom for celebrating her birthday this past May!

Performance and Concert Updates

• I performed as a percussionist for the last time with the Austin Symphonic Band in one of their recent concerts, titled Celebration, on Sunday April 13, 2025. We premiere Ryan Fillinger’s Sinfonietta, which is a spectacular work that employs inspiring musical material as connective tissue through two movements. You can listen to our performance of that work here.
  
  I thoroughly enjoyed playing this one season with ASB. While I am sad to leave the talented band and rockstar percussion crew, I look back on fond memories of performing at the various concerts, holiday concerts, and the 2024 Texas Bandmasters Association Conference. I forward to seeing more of their performances through YouTube and social media. I hope to return some day, whether it be as a percussionist or as an artist in residence. Speaking of…

• If you’d like to have me out as a guest composer or conductor in the 2025-26 season, please contact me here.

If you’re programming my music, please let me know so I can give you a shoutout here in future newsletters and report these performances to my Performing Rights Organization, BMI! You can submit concert performances of my music here.

Now Playing

Welcome to “Now Playing,” where I share the things I’m listening to right now.

• I haven’t been listening to nearly as much music as I’ve wanted to. I know. I’m a musician. But sometimes life decides that you need to pay attention to other things.

• Two off-the-top-of-my-head albums stand out to me right now: Kimbra’s A Reckoning (particularly Replay!) and Son Lux’s Lanterns (particularly Lost it to Trying – thanks, Bluecoats.)

June Happenings

• I’ll be in Alliance, OH between June 2-30 for the Bluecoats Fellowship!

• On account of all that’s happening, I will not be streaming on Twitch this month. (Sorry! I’ll get back to that sometime soon now that we’ve moved and I have ahem, my own office!)

• I’ll be cheering the Oklahoma City Thunder as they take on the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals! THUNDER UP!

• Special shoutout to Iris, who celebrates her birthday this month!