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The G7 Suite is a multi-movement chamber work that combines elements of European Art Music, Indigenous Music from Latin America, and various representations of American music. The melodic material is derived from the national anthems of the Great Seven nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each melody is re-set to new music genres and aligns itself to the rules and expectations within each idiom. This compilation is more than a series of arrangements or reharmonizations of the anthems; these are new compositions based on melodic elements from previous works. This analysis of The G7 Suite will serve three primary functions. First, each analysis will engage the sociological and/or cultural relevance of each nation or idiom. Essentially, the composer offers perspective on the relationship between the nation and the new idiom within each movement. Second, the idiomatic characteristics of each genre are revealed to and discussed with the reader. Here, the reader is able to quantify and qualify the blended characteristics of the source material and the new idiom. Last, attention will be focused on the relationships between the source material and the new composition: this is the meat of the analysis. Care will be taken to examine the interaction of the anthems and the idioms while relating each movement to the broader G7 Suite.

COUNTING (2012), for large ensemble and amplified female vocal soloists, seeks to inspire critical listening through the invocation, alienation, and recombination of varied materials and techniques from contemporary concert music, popular styles (particularly funk music), and "folk" traditions. The text in COUNTING comes from Jeremy Schmidt's poem "Censuspeak" (2011), a meditation on modes of enumeration and the "flatness" of the U.S. Census Bureau's promotional language.In an essay accompanying the full score of the piece, I discuss various "alienation techniques" at work in COUNTING, including the deployment of metrical instability, ambiguous harmonic centricity, rhythmic asymmetry, thematic fragmentation, interruptive formal patterning, and the layering of oppositional musical materials. Drawing on a theoretical framework informed by analyses of works by Igor Stravinsky, Louis Andriessen, and Prince along with critical insights gleaned from Bertolt Brecht's theories of alienation and the "Epic Theater," I examine how these and other compositional approaches create a progression of defamiliarized musical contexts that stimulate critical engagement by "alienating the familiar." In particular, I focus on ways COUNTING simultaneously cultivates and defies expectations relating to a sense of "groove." Finally, I discuss in detail the "neutral" structural role Schmidt's text ("Censuspeak") plays in the piece.

Abstract: The practice of appropriating a sign, icon or trope with an already-established meaning and investing it with a new meaning to produce a sign that retains both original and revised meanings is one example of what scholar Henry Louis Gates calls “Signifyin(g)”. I argue herein that musician George Clinton and his band P-Funk encode a subversive political program and a philosophy of life – a radically hybrid vision of cosmic liberation which I will call “heteroglossic utopia” – in their music, lyrics, visual iconography, stage performances and indeed their entire underlying social formation through the practice of Signifyin(g). In making this claim I draw extensively on a historical survey of Signifyin(g) practice in African American literature and music, the scholarship of Gates, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Paul Gilroy, and a series of interviews I conducted with Clinton and members of P-Funk while following them on tour in July of 2010.

Voices is a three-movement work for clarinet and orchestra. Each movement examines a different facet of the vocal capabilities of the clarinet and the orchestra. The clarinet player explores a myriad of techniques and the orchestral players respond to the soloist's calls, either by imitation or through accompaniment. The first movement evokes sounds of shouting, laughing, and mumbling. Since the timbre of a voice is comprised of many different frequencies, the representation of vocal contour is most vital in conveying the ebb and flow of spoken words. In certain cases an entire section of the orchestra, or even a tutti, may emulate the sound of one voice. Pitch clusters rather than traditional melodic lines are used in order to simultaneously evoke the tonal indistinctness associated with speech. The strings achieve vocal effects through a combination of bowings, articulations and portamento, the woodwinds with accents and glissandi, the brass by using hands (horns), plungers (trombones) or derby hats (trumpets), and the electric guitar through the use of a wa-wa pedal. The second movement deals primarily with techniques of inflection in folk-style singing. Particularly characteristic of this idiom is the use of grace notes to embellish and dramatize a simple melodic line. This movement also explores a phrasing in folk singing which extends over the barline, a melisma both creating and relaxing tension by playing against the metrical constructs of the accompanimental rhythm. The third movement also focuses on song; however it stresses vocal techniques more commonly associated with jazz and funk music, including growl tones and fluttertongues on wind instruments and heavy vibrato on string instruments. The clarinet again employs glissandi, however this time its function is more soulful than lyrical, and its swooping lines are punctuated by swing rhythms in the winds, percussion, electric guitar, and electric bass. Many of the effects in Voices call for extended, or non-traditional, techniques. This consideration may, at first consideration, appear to pose some interpretive difficulties for orchestral players. However, the form of a clarinet concerto allows these specialized inflections to be swiftly and effectively communicated to the orchestral players through the medium of a soloist.