I am highly proficient with notation software and engraving, and I regularly arrange and compose for my own performances and gigs.
My fiddle solos and compositions can be heard on recordings with the Atlanta-based band Kyle Lewis is a Boring Name, throughout Austin Coleman’s album Long Mile from Home, and elsewhere. I particularly enjoy using non-standard tuning systems and scordatura.
I am available for hire or collaboration, and I especially love fiddling and viola ensemble projects! Some highlights are below:
“Bash-Up” of Anton Bruckner’s Symphonies #4 and #8, arranged for 12 Violas
Special thanks to my studio mates at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music for making my dreams of playing these brass chorales come to life!! Contact me if you’d like the sheet music.
Greenbriar Groove, a Houston “street piece” for solo viola by yours truly
My first venture into composing for a concert stage, featuring lots of chopping, double stops, scordatura a la J.S. Bach’s 5th Cello Suite, my ubiquitous ringtone, and flexible structure. The lovely violist Søren Lorentzen flattered me and played a wonderfully modified version of this piece on a recital of his own at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
REFRACTED trio project
This string trio arrangement is a virtuosic setting of two of the first fiddle tunes I ever learned; it’s a good honkin’ D major chop and shred fest, that (naturally) starts with a viola solo and finishes with a big unison. I even sprinkled in a “quasi Baroque” section for Emily, and some 3+3+2 rhythms for Caio. Contact me if you’d like the sheet music.
Fun fact: the tune title “Angeline the Baker” is actually a perversion of “Angelina Baker,” mixed up somewhere along the way in the oral tradition of fiddle tunes. It naturally also has endless varieties–I learned it sometime a couple decades ago, and my version keeps transforming as I assimilate and refract other musical influences; here are some of my favorite fiddlers playing it:
Tammy Rogers King