Biography / Personal Statement

I was born and raised in west Texas. My mother's brother was a public school band director, and a great-uncle who I never actually met was an amateur pianist and composer, who published a few pieces of what could probably best be described as salon music (representative title: In a Sylvan Glade), but otherwise there were no musicians in the family.

My parents noticed that I would always gravitate to a piano when there was one around-I wasn't one of those prodigies who could instantly play any piece they heard, but I could pick out a tune and eventually find halfway decent chords to go with it. So, they bought a piano and started me on lessons, at a financial sacrifice I was only to understand much later. A few years after that I was tapped to play bass in the junior high orchestra on the grounds that I was tall for my age (I had an early growth spurt, but ended up at a thoroughly average 5'10") and that I could already read music because of the piano lessons. I played a great deal of solid repertory, including a fair amount of modern pieces, both in school orchestras and in the local community orchestra. I discovered a lot of contemporary music on records checked out from the public library-they must have had a very progressive classical music buyer. Somewhere along the line I started writing music, at least in part because the bass repertory is so awful. I was fortunate in that both of my main private teachers, Gayneyl Wheeler (piano) and Sara Montgomery (bass, although she was mainly a cellist) were themselves composers and were very supportive of my creative efforts.

I went on scholarship to Michigan State University, where I majored in double bass, and kept writing. A lovely early experience was having a choral piece performed by the top university choir. I still remember a rehearsal when the director, a very tall, very imposing guy with a deep bass voice, asked me if I had any comments. When I squeakily said I hadn't, he walked over to me and said quietly, "You don't have to be grateful, you know." So, I made some suggestions. I had a few other pieces performed, but mostly I was wrapped up in playing the bass. I should mention my wonderful bass teacher, Virginia Bodman, and other terrific professors, mostly notably Gomer Jones, who taught a chamber music literature course that opened my eyes (and ears, of course) to the Bartók string quartets in a way I had never imagined, and Theodore Johnson, who taught me counterpoint.

After graduation I became part of the diaspora of young American musicians working in Latin America, trying to get some good professional experience before tackling the difficult audition scene in the US (I think there's a very interesting book waiting to be written about this phenomenon). I kept composing, had several pieces performed, and gave a concert dedicated exclusively to my works in Guadalajara.

My last full-time bass job was in the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México (Mexico City Philharmonic), an excellent orchestra with an amazing bass section that I am proud to have been a part of. I still occasionally hear some of the recordings I participated in on the radio. But, this was a time of great political and economic turmoil in Mexico, and I noticed that I was getting more and more interested in composing. While not losing my interest in performing, I had a sort of epiphany when I realized that I probably just wasn't going to get into the Chicago Symphony. Accordingly, I decided to refocus my interest, quit my job, and started graduate school in composition at Indiana University, initially on a fellowship as a bassist, although I later served as a teaching assistant in theory.

IU turned out to be a great place for me, as I got to study composition with John Eaton, one of the great composers of the late 20th century, who has since become a mentor and close friend, and bass with Murray Grodner, possibly the most important bass pedagogue of the same time period. I had numerous pieces performed, and played a lot of bass. I also had the strangely wonderful experience of being bilingual proofreader and later research assistant for one of the great pioneers of ethnomusicology, George List (my fluent Spanish got me the gig; actual ethnomusicologists are always amazed when I tell them I had that job when I wasn't studying ethnomusicology at all).

I taught theory, composition and bass in Michigan and Texas before taking my current position at the University of Louisville, where I was a member of the Grawemeyer Award Committee for a number of years before becoming its Director.

Along the way I met Rebecca Jemian, a bassoonist and music theorist. We married in 1988. She teaches music theory at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. We maintain houses in both Louisville and Ithaca, and rack up a lot of frequent flyer miles.

While my tastes in music are very catholic, I am most interested in music which has an immediate emotional appeal, but which is also intellectually stimulating enough to bear up to repeated hearings. I tend to prefer music which is goal-directed, with clear buildups, climaxes, and denouements. I like knowing where I am in the form and recognizing something I have heard before. Although I love a great deal of music which is on the lighter side, my own music is, with some notable exceptions, usually pretty serious. This is, no doubt, at least in part a reaction to my mother's suicide in April of 1983, as I was finishing my first year of graduate school.