I was born in Edmon­ton, Canada, in 1980. I received my Bach­e­lor of Music with Hon­ours from the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto (2005), and my Master’s degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego (2007). I have also pur­sued stud­ies at the Konin­klijk Con­ser­va­to­rium in the Hague, Nether­lands. My teach­ers have included Chan Ka Nin, Chi­nary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Mar­tijn Padding, among oth­ers. In addi­tion, I have par­tic­i­pated in mas­ter­classes with com­posers such as Gilles Trem­blay, Mario Davi­dovsky, Denys Bou­liane, François Paris, and Hel­mut Lachen­mann. Prior to study­ing com­po­si­tion, I stud­ied jazz drum­ming and Cuban folk­loric per­cus­sion, which took to me to Havana for a sum­mer of pri­vate study in 2002.

I have had per­for­mances and com­mis­sions from ensem­bles in sev­eral coun­tries, includ­ing the Nieuw Ensem­ble, the Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Mon­treal, the Nou­vel ensem­ble mod­erne, the Uni­ver­sity of Alberta’s Acad­emy String Orches­tra, Tapes­try New Opera Works, Toca Loca, Con­tin­uum, the Knights Orches­tra, and the Arditti Quar­tet. My music has been per­formed in Canada, the USA, Cuba, the UK, Ger­many, and the Nether­lands. Radio broad­casts include CBC Radio 2, Radio-Canada’s Espace musique, and Toronto’s CIUT.

My music has been pre­sented in fes­ti­vals such as Amsterdam’s Gaudea­mus Music Week (my piece Cul­ture no.1 was selected for their 2006 com­pe­ti­tion), Toronto’s New Wave, soundaXis, and SHIFT fes­ti­vals; Aberdeen’s Sound Fes­ti­val; and New York’s MATA Fes­ti­val. I was addi­tion­ally selected as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Canada in the 2008 World Music Days in Lithua­nia. One of my solo pieces, Flüsse-Einflüsse, was cho­sen as a required exam piece for the grad­u­at­ing accor­dion stu­dents at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Trossin­gen in 2006. I have also received var­i­ous awards and grants, includ­ing four prizes in Canada’s SOCAN Awards for Young Com­posers (2004, 2004, 2006, 2008), a SOCAN res­i­dency grant, two grad­u­at­ing schol­ar­ships from U of T, as well as com­mis­sion­ing, travel, project, and study grants from the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts and the Alberta Foun­da­tion for the Arts.

First of all, a slight change regard­ing the last post­ing. Due to rehearsal sched­ul­ing com­pli­ca­tions, my piece with Esprit’s New Wave Fes­ti­val has been changed. They will be pre­sent­ing Flüsse-Einflüsse instead. Many thanks to Ina Hen­ning for gra­tiously agree­ing to do this on short notice.

Sec­ondly, I am pleased to announce that I was cho­sen to write a piece for the Arditti Quar­tet dur­ing their res­i­dency at UCSD in 2007. The Arditti are one of the most highly-regarded string quar­tets in con­tem­po­rary music and I am more than thrilled to be work­ing with them.

Two news items to report… First of all, I’m pleased to say that I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Esprit Orches­tra’s New Wave Fes­ti­val again this year. They will be doing the harp and piano piece writ­ten for my UCSD jury, which is the same piece being done at Gaudea­mus in Ams­ter­dam. In addi­tion, I’ve been asked to write an orches­tral piece for the 2007 install­ment of the fes­ti­val, which is very excit­ing. I will post more details (as they become avail­able) in the Per­for­mances section.