Category: Music

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More Abundance

Decorative flyer depicting a small barn in a misty rural landscape

Hank Lazer and I are returning to our recent performance celebrating the release of Lazer’s poetry collection Abundant Life. Hank will read selections from the book. I’ll provide some ambient field recording sounds, play my electric clawhammer guitar, and deploy some voice-responsive electronics.

“[Art is] a craft-based tool for the study of consciousness.” — Caroll Dunham

I think this description fits what Lazer and I do together.

Friday, February 13, 2025 5:30pm
Abundant Life
Lorrie Lane Studio
2420 Gary Fitts Street
Tuscaloosa, 35401
Reading and performance with Hank Lazer

We’re happy to be performing in Lorrie Lane’s recently expanded studio on an evening’s program that includes some hands-on art marking, too!

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Bowles Fouse Duo Revisit Cypher, A Circle

An excerpt of the musical score for Cypher, a Circle depicting a circle divided into four quadrants with note names on the outside and numbers on the inside

Tomorrow pianists Kathryn Fouse and Adam Bowles kick off a six city tour of Alabama presented by the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. They’ll perform a program of new compositions for piano duo, including my piece Cypher, A Circle. Bowles and Fouse premiered the work in 2013.

The piece is a series of guided improvisations using the puzzle-like diagram above to determine pitches, durations, number of notes, etc.

Other composers on the program include Ron Clemmons, Michael Coleman, Monroe Golden, Gavin Green, Michael Huebner, Mark Lackey, and Emily Zhang. Not every program includes every piece; the ones that include my work are in bold below.

  • Tuesday 2/10 1pm – Shelton State Community College, Terrific Tuesday Series, Tuscaloosa AL
  • Tuesday 2/10 7:30pm – Samford University, Birmingham AL
  • Wednesday 2/11 11am – Wallace State Community College, Hanceville AL
  • Thursday 2/12 1pm – Thompson High School Performing Arts Center, Alabaster AL
  • Friday 2/13 1:30pm – Alabama School for the Blind, Talladega AL
  • Sunday 3/1 6pm – University of Alabama in Huntsville, 13th Annual UAH Keyboard Festival, Huntsville AL

These concerts are supported in part by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

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Vuorovesi Trio Performs Worldlines

Excerpt of the Worldlines score showing black music notation on a white background

The Vurorovesi Trio will perform my composition Worldlines on Monday, January 12 at 7pm in the Moore Gallery in Bryce Main on the campus of the University of Alabama. The Vuorovesi Trio is made up of University of Alabama School of Music faculty members Diane Boyd Schultz, Mary Lindsey Bailey, Osiris J. Molina.

Monday, January 12, 2026 7:00pm
Vuorovesi Trio
Moore Gallery in Bryce Main
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa AL

Like many of my scores, the musicians performing Worldlines determine the moment-to-moment shape of the music. In this case, all of the musicians share the same written material and use hand-signals to determine how they navigate through it. One hand signal may cue players to repeat their current phrase, while another may cause them to read backwards through the score. A worldline is a tool from physics which describes an object’s path in both three-dimensional space and in time.

Worldlines is scored for 3 or more sustaining instruments. I love how well it fits the wind trio format and Vuorovesi, in particular. Here’s a video from Vuorovesi’s April 2025 performance at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

YouTube player

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A More Abundant Life with Hank Lazer

I’m appearing tomorrow at a poetry reading/performance with Hank Lazer at Ernest & Hadley Booksellers to celebrate the release of Lazer’s poetry collection Abundant Life. I’ll provide some ambient field recording sounds, play my electric clawhammer guitar, and deploy some voice-responsive electronics.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 5pm
Hank Lazer
Ernest & Hadley Booksellers
Tuscaloosa AL 35401

Hank and I have been performing together for the last 5 years–less than a quarter of the time represented in Abundant Life. And like the poetry in the collection, our work together continues to change and evolve while circling around a common interest in poetry and sound as opportunity for stillness, presence, attention.

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Floating Down the River with a Fiddle and a Banjo

Onoma River album cover showing an engraving of a Kingfisher surrounded by a gold halo and hovering over a rural landscape. Esther Morgan-Ellis and Holland Hopson's names are in cursive and blocky fonts.
Onoma River cover art, exceprt from John Klosterman’s print

Fiddler Esther Morgan-Ellis and I are celebrating the release of our new recording, Onoma River, with an online listening party on Thursday. Onoma River is a collection of new old-time tunes for fiddle and banjo that brings new blood to old-time music. Esther and I embrace the spirit of ‘crooked’ tunes with a set of newly composed music that builds on southern Appalachian traditions.

Thursday, November 13, 2025 7pm
Onoma River Listening Party
RSVP for a free, online listening party

I’ve been writing a banjo tune every week since 2011. A few of these tunes have wound up in other projects, but most have never been released. Working with Esther was a great opportunity to get more of this music out into the world.

To accompany the album we commissioned John Klosterman to create a beautiful, limited-edition, 12.5” x 18.5” art print. The hand-printed piece incorporates gold ink on Arnhem cotton rag paper and chine collé woodblock images on Japanese rice paper. We chose a section of the print to serve as the album artwork. More information about John’s work can be found at www.johnklosterman.com