ARTIST STATEMENT

The guitar pervades our culture. It is itself an icon. But that icon can cause prejudice in the classical realm and limit expression and education in the popular realm. After two decades of performing works from several different centuries on the guitar and its ancestors, the lute and vihuela de mano, I have now begun to compile a large list of my own compositional contributions hoping to break the mold of the typical classical guitarist and expand the horizons of young students. 

The guitar has enormous potential to speak in intimate settings. The original meaning of chamber music is to present great music in small personal venues where human beings can explore the soul. While I derive great enjoyment from writing and performing solo works for the guitar, I feel my most important contribution is in song. I love to use poetry that “comes to me.” Serendipitously. My sister sends a box of Grandfather's poetry that has sat in a closet for fifty years [Father Said, 2003]. A host pulls a book off the shelf written by his wife's grandmother in 1911 [Speak Love, 2005]. A voice workshop turns into a poetry writing session to teach students to be in touch with language [Voices in the Dark, 2000]. A friend dies and my wife writes a lament [Pearly Everlasting, 2001]. My musical language has been described as a style that never heard the 19th or 20th centuries, but then a section sounds like Tristan, or a blues progression concludes a suite, a tone row describes the wanderings of a star-nosed mole. My sense of diversity in modern culture not only includes the “cross-over” of popular and classical or academic styles, I wish to cross ethnic and time boundaries as well.