Composer
solo piano
2 min. 30 sec.
Theme for Pascale Boinot was composed for a short film, directed by Cat Mills, which was screened at Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, Vancouver, Canada, on April 28-29th, 2006. The solo piano was meant to evoke something sensual and human– mirroring the dynamics between two lovers/characters in the film. The musical language is simple, yet elegant– much in the style of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies”.
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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.
SATB saxophone quartet and stereo electroacoustic track
5 min. 20 sec.
‘Hexagonal’ was written for saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone). The piece takes a playful approach to working with various patterns of six, inspired by some of the most common and beautiful patterns found in nature. The beehive, and the snowflake, for example, and of course many flowers and leaves are all based on the hexagon shape. Transposing some of these visual ideas into musical phrases, and exploring some of the colour and textural variations in musical language, this piece is very much about enjoying the simplest pleasures that the natural world has to offer.
‘Hexagonal’ received its premiere (as an acoustic work) with the Cobalt Saxophone Quartet, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, NY, USA, on November 16th, 2024. The electroacoustic backing track was created in spring 2025. The track takes its material from only two sound sources: a commuter train, along with some springtime birdsong— an interesting blend of the urban and natural elements of the soundscape in Vancouver, Canada.
Sheet music for this piece is available through the Canadian Music Centre:
stereo electroacoustic track
5 min. 35 sec.
Type A is a stereo electroacoustic sound-object piece, which was composed using only two sound sources: a long, hollow plastic tube and an old-fashioned typewriter. It was created using both analog and digital studio equipment. The sounds were processed in many different ways, including (analog) tape loops, pitch shifting, filtering, echo, reverb, and granulation.
Type A has been performed at various locations, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, 2003, the Sonic Boom Festival, at the Western Front, Vancouver, Canada, on March 10, 2005, and selected as part of the International Women’s Electroacoustic Listening Room Project, 8th Annual New Music Festival at California State University, Fullerton, California, USA, March 21, 2009.
stereo electroacoustic track
2 min.
Storge is an electroacoustic work, taking its name from the Greek word meaning “familial love”— the natural, instinctual bonds of affection that family members feel for one another. The piece incorporates two short quotes (both spoken in German language): one taken from a text by author Maureen Hawkins, and the other a short Biblical quote from 1 Corinthians 13:4. Weaving a soundscape around these spoken words, is a diaphanous melody played on the piano,accompanied by various other familiar, gentle, soothing sounds, including rain on pavement, springtime birdsong, a distant church bell tolling, a saxophone, and a baby laughing.
Storge was commissioned by early music ensemble La Petite Écurie, and premiered on May 18th, 2025, at Schloss Schwetzingen, Germany, as part of the Schwetzinger Festspiele.
6 min.
Lost Lake, for piano trio, was inspired by two beautifully unrelated sources: a verse of 17th-century Japanese poetry by Matsuo Basho, and a couple of melodic phrases from a work by 12th-century abbess and composer Hildegard of Bingen.
These two ideas came together in the barren month of November, a time when everything seems pared down to its most essential parts. Somewhere in this bleak landscape though, I believe is something pure– a vision, perhaps.
“The moon glows the same:
It is the drifting cloud forms
Make it seem to change.”
-Matsuo Basho
Lost Lake received its premiere as part of Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom Festival, with Reg Quiring- violin, Luke Kim- cello, and Noel McRobbie- piano, on March 14th, 2025, at Pyatt Hall, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Sheet music for this piece is available through the Canadian Music Centre:
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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.
chamber quartet (two erhu, viola & cello)
12 min. 45 sec.
September Songs was written for erhu quartet (two erhu, viola, and cello), and is comprised of three movements: “The Hummingbird”, “To the Rising Moon”, and “Tunnels of Light”. The first movement, “The Hummingbird”, captures the light, delicate movements of these tiny feathered creatures. Featuring trills, tremolo, quick rhythmic patterns, and short melodic phrases, the energy of this movement leads into something more calm and a bit mysterious in the second movement.
“To the Rising Moon” opens with the first several notes of a Gregorian plainchant melody found in the “Graduale Romanum” (c. 8th century). This melody develops gently, making use of canonic phrases, and the idea of mirror images—as the moon rises to its peak in the sky, before sinking again behind the trees. This movement was also inspired by a short work by the 13th century poet and mystic, Rumi:
“There is a way
From your heart to mine
And my heart knows it
Because it is clean and pure like water
When the water is still like a mirror
It can behold the Moon.”
This gentle interlude melts back into the energy of the third movement, “Tunnels of Light”. Inspired by the ongoing movement of clouds in the sky on an overcast day, and the fleeting moments where the sunshine suddenly bursts through in brilliant, colourful rays– there are several short melodic and rhythmic motifs at work in this movement, combined and recombined playfully.
September Songs was commissioned by Vancouver-based erhu player, Lan Tung, and its creation was funded with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.
solo clarinet & string octet
9 min.
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“The air is full of after-thunder freshness,
And everything rejoices and revives.
With the whole outburst of its purple clusters
The lilac drinks the air of paradise.
The gutters overflow; the change of weather
Makes all you see appear alive and new.
Meanwhile the shades of sky are growing lighter,
Beyond the blackest cloud the height is blue.
An artist’s hand, with mastery still greater
Wipes dirt and dust off objects in his path.
Reality and life, the past and present,
Emerge transformed out of his colour-bath.
The memory of over half a lifetime
Like swiftly passing thunder dies away.
The century is no more under wardship:
High time to let the future have its say.
It is not revolutions and upheavals
That clear the road to new and better days,
But revelations, lavishness and torments
Of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze.”
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After the Storm, for string octet and clarinet, was inspired by a colourful poem of the same name, by Boris Pasternak. The piece was commissioned as part of the HER Projected online festival, presented by all-female ensemble, Allegra Chamber Orchestra. The work received its premiere online on June 26th, 2021, (recorded earlier at the Orpheum Annex, Vancouver), featuring Michelle Goddard- clarinet, with members of Allegra Chamber Orchestra, directed by Janna Sailor.
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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.
Hymn, a work for solo cello and orchestra in three movements, takes its inspiration from a variety of sources. The first movement, The Sun, was inspired by a poem of the same name, by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004). The poem opens with:
“All colours come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular colour, for it contains them all…”
This ties into the idea of exploring the classical Hindustani Raag Des. The piece begins from a fixed central point (much like the idea of an alap introduction in classical Indian music)– one unison pitch, here carried by the string section– gradually melting into various other orchestral colours– then, radiating outward from its unison beginnings, to explore a full range of the orchestral palette.
The second movement, Hymn, was inspired by another poem by Czeslaw Milosz:
“There is no one between you and me.
Neither a plant drawing sap from the depths of earth
Nor an animal, nor a man, nor wind walking between the clouds.
The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass.
The most powerful flames like water washing the tired feet of travelers.
The greenest trees like lead blooming in the thick of the night.
Love is sand swallowed by parched lips.”
This movement takes its inspiration from a melodic fragment of a hymn, Oh, Love, How Deep, attributed to 14th century monk, Thomas à Kempis. The music grows from these pure, austere beginnings into something warm and passionate.
This leads into the third movement, Light, inspired by a poem of the same name– written by 14th century Persian poet, Shamsedin-Mohamed Hafez Shirazi. This movement explores some playful rhythmic patterns and cascading scales, contrasted against steady, supporting long tones.
“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness
The astonishing light of your own being!
…One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have
Is that I did not kiss you enough.
Look what happens with a love like that–
It lights up the whole sky.”
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Sheet music (score and parts) are available through the Canadian Music Centre.
Mosaic was inspired by the idea of creating a dreamscape, with the solo horn as the central character: the one experiencing the dream. I was interested in exploring the idea of dreaming as a means of processing ideas and information, but at the same time, being aware that dreaming is not a process over which we have the same degree of control as we do over our conscious thoughts. Just as real-life information and experiences are filtered and transformed through the dreaming process, several motivic ideas recur and are transformed throughout the various movements. The piece is structured in five movements (attacca), beginning with the lower strings emulating the slow breathing of one falling asleep. The second movement is bright, with melodic reference to a pelog gamelan scale. The third movement begins with a duet between solo horn and solo cello, expanding outwards from the first three notes of Brahms’ famous Lullaby, and evolving into something much more intense at the climax of the piece. The fourth movement is a cadenza for the solo horn, leading into the fifth movement, which contains reference to an out-of-body experience.
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Orchestral score and parts are available for rental through the Canadian Music Centre.
Arrangement for horn and piano is available through the International Horn Society.
I. Frontispiece/The Garden
II. Earthly Delights
III. Hell
Triptych was inspired by one of the most well-known paintings ever made in that genre: The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Flemish master, Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516). The three movements of the piece correspond to the three panels of the painting (plus frontispiece). The piece evolves from the austere, uncertain beginnings of the world (Frontispiece), into the peaceful, but strange surroundings of the Garden. The middle movement is playful, sensual, and earthy (Earthly Delights); the last is relentless, mocking, and grotesque (Hell).
There is so much colour, symbolism and detail present in the painting; the music is simply a distillation of these ideas. The piece, like the painting, follows a sense of predestined trajectory. The opening material of the piece becomes a recurring motive throughout all three movements: from the very beginning, there is a sense of inevitability about where things are going.
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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.