Pocket Anxiety is the composer’s way to express the chaotic relationship he has with his phone and the numerous notifications that demand our attention every second of the day. Emails, phone calls, texts, social media alerts, all crowding our electronic personal space, accompanied with sounds designed to break our focus from the real world and turn our attention towards our phones. The piece explores these feelings in three sections, dubbed contact, rejection, and resignation¸ almost mirroring the real time process when faced with the overwhelming need to respond.

Impostor Syndrome is an growing epidemic in our world today, especially in academia. This is the irrational fear that you don't belong, that you are a pretender hiding your inadequacy from the world. This is a debilitating state of mind that can cause us to doubt everything we do, and can keep us from achieving our goals or pursuing real relationships.

When I experience this, one of the only ways I can recover is through the help of my friends and loved ones, and the encouragement that they provide for me.

Naphthalene captures our fear of the unknown, the hatred that stems from our ignorance. Often, this hatred is baseless; we don't understand, or misinterpret an aspect of our world, and learn to fear it.

A growing number of people fear pesticides, citing it as one of our greatest health concerns. However, these pesticides, like the chemical Naphthalene, not only pose no threat to humans once the food is on the table, but are extremely beneficial in producing the enormous quantities of food needed to keep the population fed.

One part of a larger cycle based on the Hero's Journey, a literary model that most stories follow, whether they are aware or not.

In this section, the hero has received the call to adventure, but is refusing that call. The realization is setting in that the journey they are about to embark on is long and perilous, and it may be a while until it return home. The nerves turn to fear, the fear turns to panic, and this panic boils over, until the hero manages to drift off to sleep.

Working with my good friend and incredible clarinetist Conor Sprunger, I aimed to create a work that allowed the player an extreme degree of freedom in the performance of the piece. Besides approximate tempo and expression markings, the musician is free to direct the nervous, panicked energy that this piece creates.

Movement 7 of a collection of 10 pieces for string quartet, performed by Harmony Kelly, Gabby Lindhurst, Kennedy Dixon, and Becca Spurbeck. This piece was a study work loosely based on the string quartets of Bartok and Stravinsky.

Movement 7 of a collection of 10 pieces for string quartet, performed by Harmony Kelly, Gabby Lindhurst, Kennedy Dixon, and Becca Spurbeck. This piece was a study work loosely based on the string quartets of Bartok and Stravinsky.

A set of dances for duo marimba that forces the player to work with each other, and against each other. The intricate interlocking parts and rhythmic overlapping lead to a tilted, twisted slow dance, where the dancers are constantly falling in and out of time with each other. The rhythmic instability only increases until the two parts collide together, and sheepishly start over again.

This is a reading from the Ball State Wind Symphony from their reading session May 2022. These performers had about 25 minutes to prepare and perform this work - my appreciation to them!

'Afflatus' is a Latin word the means 'divinely inspired' - though this piece does not pretend to be inspired by supernatural forces. Instead, it is inspired some of my favorite wind band composers - Vincent Persichetti, David Maslanka, and Clifton Williams.