An invitation to University College Dublin has led to a month’s residency in Ireland and a collaborative composition project with UCD Irish scholar Eoin Mc Evoy. Thanks to support in the form of a travel grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and invitations from both the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and…
Piano Music available from Harbridge & Wanless Music
I am delighted that Harbridge & Wanless Music will now be publishing much of my piano music. The first two collections are now out: Vancouver Island Suite, five pieces for intermediate piano, commissioned in 1997 by the Victoria Piano Summer School, and A Fugue, Two Waltzes and a Rag, released in February 2025. Available from…
PlanetWoman Project 2024
I am thrilled and honoured to be a participating composer in the international PlanetWoman project. 10 composers from 10 countries have created 15 compositions, one on a text by Hildegard von Bingen and the rest on poems by the project creator and producer, the British-Hungarian poet and visual artist Zsuzsanna Ardó. These compositions were completed…
2023 Update
It’s been several years since I have posted anything here, so perhaps it’s about time I provided an update of some of my recent and upcoming activities and events.
Events in 2018
The Orion Vespers (Vesperae pro Serveto) received its third performance on January 28th at Cordova Bay United Church (Victoria BC) when I conducted 60 singers and chamber orchestra in the 7 movements of this half-hour setting of Latin texts by Frances Dearman. A miniature I wrote for the occasion was performed at the University of…
New Commission 2017 – Vesperae pro Serveto
(June 2017) This summer I’ll be working on a 7-movement piece for mixed-voice choir and chamber orchestra commissioned by the First Unitarian Church of Victoria with support from the national bodies of the Canadian and American Unitarian-Universalist Churches. Vesperae pro Serveto (Vespers for Servetus) is a kind of secular Vespers; the poetry (in Latin) centres…
Why Boys Should Sing
This is an article I wrote in 2007 when I was training adolescent boys in the Viva Youth Choir (now Viva Youth Voices) in Victoria. It came up recently when I received a letter from someone who had read it online and let me know how inspiring it had been for her as a high…
Isbjørn! to be performed in Victoria March 8, 2017
As part of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra’s 2017 New Music Festival, Isbjørn! (2013) will be performed in a concert of works written especially for the large acoustic space of Christ Church Cathedral. This piece which I wrote after an artistic residency in Svalbard in the fall of 2012, along with choral music by Stephanie Martin,…
2016-2017 Season Highlights
I am pleased to be working again as Chorus Director with the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra. This December we will be performing Bach’s wonderful Magnificat with Parts 1 & 2 of the Christmas Oratorio, and in June 2017 there will be a full performance of my 2010 work Sea Cantata. This is my 12th season as Artistic…
Bach-on-the-Rock in April 2016
I am delighted to be working with Saltspring Island’s “Bach-on-the-Rock” chorus and orchestra to prepare and perform 2 concerts in April of 2016. The programme will include works by Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Liszt and selections from my own “Sea Cantata.”