I am finally getting my act together to “get down to business” and put all the various bits and pieces of music I have scribbled onto various notepads over the last year, and head out to NY to work with violist Kathryn Lockwood and percussionist Yousif Sheronick of duoJalal. I hope to make some real progress with my understanding of their dynamic as a viola/percussion duo. More precisely, I need to more deeply absorb all the incredible drum traditions and methods of performance that are possible that Yousif has at his disposal so that I can complete the piece I composing for the duo. I have lots of music written, but am afraid much of it is not going to sound as I imagine since my understanding of these instruments is currently quite limited; that will change.

Since Yousif has such a broad, virtuosic range of experience, it is extremely exciting to entertain the spaces between fully notated and completely improvised music for the purpose of this piece. It will be the first piece of mine that will incorporate so much improvisation back to back with notated music, and is something that I have been wanting to do for a very long time. I am most grateful to Kathryn and Yousif for trusting me to write a piece for them.