Bullfrog Boogie
When I shared this news with my amused-by-contra dad, he said “Wait, now let me get this straight—you’re gonna write a Bullfrog Boogie?”
Works
All Published Works
Festival!
The COVID pandemic taught me that us musicians are hungry for opportunities to play together again, and I wanted a celebratory piece everyone could play that would be a fun way to wrap up the day’s events. We premiered it with around 35 folks as the final piece on the program, to the delight of us all.
Festival! for Bassoon Ensemble
What’s better than a piece for Double Reed Choir? A piece for Bassoon Ensemble! This piece begged to be arranged for all bassoons
Ice Cream Truck
A fun piece for four bassoons that includes everyone’s summertime favorites from the local ice cream truck, including: The 1812 Overture, Yankee Doodle, Turkey in the Straw, It’s a Small World and others
Ice Cream Truck 2: “Son of Ice Cream Truck”
Ice Cream Truck 2 came about while I was awaiting the results of some scary medical tests. I figured I’d rather laugh than cry, and since I also really like to make other people laugh with my compositions, the time was ripe for another “derangement”. This piece is meant to be performed very playfully. Here are the tune titles and notes for Ice Cream Truck 2: La donne e mobile Brahms - Hungarian Dance #5 Camptown Races Glory to the Bus Driver Bizet- Toreador from “Carmen” Beethoven- Fur Elise Man on the Flying Trapeze Mexican Clapping Song Mexican Hat Dance
Kachina
Coming Soon, a Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra. Commissioned by Gypsy Richardson.
Los Angeles Sketches
“Sketches” took shape over a two-year period, inspired by the sights and sounds of Southern California.
Love Medicine
Each of us carries inside our hearts our own special form of medicine, an inexplicable uniqueness which makes up a portion of our interior world. To illustrate, there is snake medicine, fire medicine, plant medicine, and most certainly, bassoon medicine…just about anything you can conceive of can become medicine when it is cultivated and nurtured within you, and then shared with others by being and/or doing. Medicine is paradoxically participatory and also IS, without the need for any activity on the part of the bearer.
Love Medicine 2
Love Medicine 2 for Two Bassoons and Piano is a celebration, a collaboration of heart and soul meant to be shared with dear friends.
Scherzo for Six
This piece was composed for the 2022 staff of the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp in honor of Mark Popkin and Loren Glickman.
Songs for Wicked Children
Toys Left in the Rain, Strangers Have the Best Candy, Lost: Green Parrot, Shark-infested Pudding
Tales From The Grove
This piece is the result of a serendipitous commission late in the summer of 2021 by nature photographer, botanist, and fellow tree lover Terry Ashley, who requested a piece for bassoon and piano in honor of the occasion of her 80th birthday. Many thanks, Terry!
Tall Tales
It occurred to me that the bassoon is still a tree. It’s tall. It’s often brown, and most often made of wood. The tree gives its life and becomes a bassoon, and bassoonists are able to make music because of that priceless generous sacrifice.
These Four Directions
This piece is about the directions that you love, directions you can almost not stand to face, and directions you never thought you’d go.
Two Pieces for Solo Bassoon
Song for the Water Spirits and Yellow Poplar With Birdsong
Unfinished Conversations
“Unfinished Conversations” is dedicated to bassoonist and dear friend Eric Van der Veer Varner (1974-2019). Eric and I met at Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp in 2001 and immediately became friends.
Wood, Water & Roses - Women's Medicine for Difficult Times
Each of us carries within us our own spark, our own medicine gift to the world. Women carry particularly potent medicine, due to the polarity of receptiveness and intuitive softening inherent in their energetic makeup. The entire planet is in a shambles from enduring too much masculine energy for way too long. It’s beyond time to listen to the women in our lives…. first, the women heal the women, and then the women will heal the men.
Wood, Water & Roses - Women's Medicine for Difficult Times - English Horn Solo
English horn solo edition of Wood, Water & Roses-Women’s Medicine for Difficult times. Each of us carries within us our own spark, our own medicine gift to the world. Women carry particularly potent medicine, due to the polarity of receptiveness and intuitive softening inherent in their energetic makeup. The entire planet is in a shambles from enduring too much masculine energy for way too long. It’s beyond time to listen to the women in our lives…. first, the women heal the women, and then the women will heal the men.
Yellow Poplar With Birdsong
“Yellow Poplar With Birdsong” for solo bassoon, composed by Amber Ferenz