Works

The Devil’s Dictionary was commissioned by and is dedicated to Dr. Mark Ostoich, Professor of Oboe at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Each of the work’s three movements was inspired by a word definition found in Ambrose Bierce’s sardonic lexicon “The Devil’s Dictionary”. The first movement, “Dawn”, evokes the strange sounds heard as the sun rises. “Fiddle” was inspired by the fiddling of the great Louisiana Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot. The final short movement, “Circus”, is my little homage to the greatest work ever written for dancing elephants: Igor Stravinsky’s “Circus Polka”.

Cherubs is a single-movement scherzo which pits a decidedly uncherubic saxophone against the three string instruments. Some extended techniques are used in the sax part. Cherubs was commissioned by an anonymous donor who wished to commemorate Clarence Laughton’s book of photographs entitled “Ghosts Along the Mississippi”.