November In Review

November has always been my favorite month of the year. I think it’s the changing of the seasons meets Hallow-thanks-mas and the marathon to the end of the year is upon us. Some notable events this November included:

• Traveling to the Percussive Arts Society International Conference to work the C. Alan Publications booth, attend the Composition Committee, and delve into the nightly festivities with several thousand of my closest friends in the percussion community.

• I enjoyed Thanksgiving with family, enjoyed overdue hangs with friends, and took some time to catch up on Stranger Things 5, Pluribus, and Thunder Basketball.

• I finished a few works:

• Alacrán, for Alto Saxophone and Marimba was composed for University of Texas Rio Grande Valley undergraduate music education major Matthew Ayala.

  • Alacrán is a dramatic tone poem that explores the intricate and often perilous mating ritual of scorpions, reimagined through the voices of alto saxophone and marimba. Structured in three continuous sections, the work traces a narrative arc from solitary display to shared movement, culminating in a fiery rhythmic climax.

• Uncommon Altars, for SATB Chorus and MainStage, was composed for the Da Capo Choir in New York City, under the direction of former Oklahoma City University alum Patty Irwin. It will tentatively be premiered in NYC next spring with yours truly performing the MainStage part.

  • Uncommon Altars is a meditation on the quiet, often unnoticed places where reverence lives. In these places of solemn energy, sacred connotations take on the form of secular and humanistic rituals when we are faced with the storms of our lives. The sound world of the choir, combined by live electronics, creates a progression from concrete jungle, forest, and ocean during a thunderstorm, all using actual samples of these settings, to depict the different and uncommon altars we hold every day.

• Just in time for PASIC, C. Alan Publications recently released Wired Beats. I had the pleasure of creating the accompaniment tracks for composer Brian Monroe’s duets for drum pads, all of which serve as my love letter to EDM, Lo-fi, and Dubstep. I am so excited for these works to be out in the world, and I look forward to young developing musicians to practice along to them!

As for the rest of work and life in general, I continued last month’s theme of rebuilding and getting back to my usual output as a composer, collaborator, and most of all, sense of being. I’m thankful to be where I’m at right now, and that includes all of the things I’m excited about coming up in December.

Performance and Concert Updates

• Thanks go out to Dr. Matthew Mailman, who recently conducted the Oklahoma City University Wind Ensemble in a performance of Into the Void: a Study on Disembodied Consciousness on November 6, 2025. You can watch that performance and the rest of the concert livestream here.

• Thanks go out to BDWinds, conducted by Dr. Kaitlin Bove, who recently performed my piece, A Thousand Inner Voices on their concert on November 17, 2025.

• Celebrated composer, world-class percussionist, and amazing friend Marco Schirripa performed the world premiere of my piece, Ari’s Repose, as part of the Pixel Masterworks project! This project was also featured in the December issue of PAS’s Percussive Notes.

• 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’ve been recently came across an album on Instagram called Monochrome Clarity. As I rebuild my world from what this year has done to it, this album provides exactly that. My favorite track on that album right now is Monochrome Dream.

• I recently saw that Jimmy Kimmel had guest Paul Anka on his nighttime show. He performed the celebrated hit, My Way, that night. After many years of loving that song, it profoundly hit home to hear the singer songwriter himself perform it these many decades later. It’s inspired me to want to approach songwriting, but perhaps that can happen in the next life.

December Happenings

I attended the following events:

• Temple College Percussion Ensemble performed my Hymn, on December 3rd. Thanks to fellow C. Alan composer Nathan Siegel for programming it with his students. It was a great show, and I am always happy to share the program with Quartz Mountain by teacher and lifelong mentor Joe W. Moore III.

and I will be attending the following events:

• I’ll be visiting Trinity HS in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a rehearsal and Midwest Send-Off Concert on December 10 at 7 PM at Texas Christian University Van Cliburn Hall.

I will be attending The Midwest Clinic in Chicago! Not only will I be working at booth #1710 with C. Alan Publications, but I’ll also be attending the following performances in chronological order:

• Youth Performing Arts School (KY) will perform a movement of Number Theory Vol. 1 on Wednesday, December 17 at 1:15 PM.

• The world premiere of Descansos, commissioned by the Ninkasi Percussion Group, will take place on Thursday, December 18 at 1:30 PM.

• Trinity HS (TX) will be performing Cosmic Lighthouse on Friday, December 19 at 2 PM.

This is the first Midwest since 2021 that I’ve had music performed. I am incredibly indebted to these programs for including me and many other fantastic composers on one of the biggest stages in the world. Thank you and congratulations to everyone involved. I can’t wait to see everyone in Chi-town!