As a young person I felt writing and playing music inseparable from the beautiful natural environment and seasons of Vermont where I grew up. At the age of eight I wrote my first compositions and began formal musical training with avant-garde composer Bruce Hobson, a neighbor, and at age seventeen I recorded The Parsifal Concept, an album of many of my early piano pieces. During my composition studies with Peter Lieberson and James Yannatos at Harvard, I first wrote pieces for others to play including three string quartets, a short song cycle, and several choral pieces. As a graduate student at Yale I composed a violin sonata, a set of piano variations, a wind sextet, and Light of Light, a 45-minute cantata for chamber ensemble and chorus, which I premiered in Dorset, Vermont, with a group of fellow students from the Yale School of Music. Studying with David Lefkowitz at UCLA I composed almost exclusively for performers there: piano music, chamber music, organ music, and two symphonies.

The Echoing Green, which I composed in 1988 for the centennial of the Radcliffe Choral Society went on, 35 years later, to win the Focus Prize of the American Choral Directors Association and to be published by E.C. Schirmer. 21st Century 23rd Psalm and The Human Journey, both composed for the LA Choral Lab were recognized by the American Prize, garnering second place and honorable mention, respectively. My work in Waldorf education and my long association with the Pasadena Waldorf School have led to the creation of dozens of pieces of music for young performers, and the songs I wrote for the PBS Kids show Let’s Go Luna, have been heard by millions of children around the world.

I am happiest composing music in the context of community, and most of my music has been composed to be performed by people I know, including many choirs of mine, especially the Occidental Glee Club, the Los Angeles Daiku, and the Pasadena Chorale.