Nina

I’m blogging on my tablet from the Caribbean, sitting above the beach, looking north to the water through the palms. My wife is napping in our room. It’s a new calendar year, the last month of my 44th year, and there’s hardly been time to reflect. I wanted to update in late December, but that… Continue reading Nina

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Cadence Canon (On Eight Notes)

g’/d’     b♭’/d’     b♭’/f#’      b’/f#’       b’/e’      a♭’/e’     a♭’/c’       g’/c’ a♭/c       g/c          g/d          b♭/d       b♭/f#      b/f#        b/e        a♭/e (2008)

Superscription

“Sequence, symmetry & simplicity”–my composer’s motto, 1996. 15 years later, inspiration strikes and the same schemes still seem sparkly.

Canon on Six Notes

Musical symmetry in the eponymous string quartet I wrote for my grandmother Madra, who would’ve been 105 this year: a”/d’     d”/f’     f”/c’     c”/g’     g”/e’     e”/a’ (1998)

Mahboob

(2009/2011) When I was about 13, without any knowledge of my past beyond the fact that I was a black transracial adoptee, I decided to create an alter ego. In my mind he was a jazz musician, sometimes a cultural diplomat from the West who had reconnected with his own roots in Ethiopia—or depending on… Continue reading Mahboob