Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

One of my favorite pieces is Hector Berlioz' Harold in Italy, a tone poem for solo viola and orchestra. Having grown up in Hunterdon and Somerset counties in north-central New Jersey, I got to play 'Harold' with…

I may be one of the last composers who still writes with a pencil and paper. Since we're moving to England this month, we had to get rid of a lot of things, and many boxes of my scribblings were…

1520's and 1620's: Doubling Choirs

During the first 200 years of the viola's existence, it was doing mostly what it was invented to do: doubling vocal parts. Now, more than 500 years later, many believe the viola is still the…

Originally posted on 1/31/20 as 'Artist-in-Residence' for the American Viola Society:

People seem to like an agreed-upon authority to magnify their already pre-existing opinions. 

Whether cherry-picking from the Constitution or the bible, it's not merely their own little opinion now---…

Originally posted on 1/10/20 as 'Artist-in-Residence' for the American Viola Society:

No, there's no punchline. It can sometimes be tricky to define where the line is, and in a sense, there's a low bar to claiming any of it. Once…