The Artaria String Quartet, August 18th at the Stringwood Chamber Music Festival in Lanesboro, MN

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Commissioned by the Artaria String Quartet

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Premiered February of 2019 at Viterbo University, Jonathan Borja, flute, and Mary Ellen Haupert, piano.

This piece for flute and piano is dedicated to the silenced artists that perished during WWII and is inspired by two fragments that I found in the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.:  an ink drawing entitled "A Brighter Future", by Bedrich Fritta, and a musical sketch of a twelve-tone row composed by the Moravian composer, Gideon Klein. I was captivated by the ink drawing with its clear expression of freedom and the still life that depicts a violin and musical manuscript containing a music motive in Ab major.  The construction of my composition is largely derived from the dual tonal-atonal nature of the two motives as it drives forward in thematic variations expressing the conflicting emotions of hope and despair.  WN

Jonathan Borja, flute performing Objets Trouvés

June 2018 at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Dr. Corey Mackey clarinet, Keith Leinert, vibraphone.

Commissioned by Dr. Corey Mackey

Spiritual Adaptation to Higher Altitudes is a beautiful work.  Bursts of excitement and moments of dialogue punctuate the long, seamless phrases, inviting the musicians to explore the remarkably rich palette of colors created by this pairing.  William Neil has created a truly unique, much-needed addition to the clarinet and percussion repertoire!- Dr. Corey Mackey

Tango No. 1 is dedicated to Malgosia and her newborn.  I imagined a mother, with a child in her arms, dancing to the rhythm of this tango.  Tango No. 2  is for  Diana, a  poet and a  believer in sci-art quantum physics of the everyday.  It is a slow and somber dance with the universe.  Tango No. 3 was inspired by  Amanda, the mother character in The Glass Menagerie.   The music, like her memory,  is surreal and fantastic.

Premiere performance by Marco De Santi, guitar and  Frieder Berthold, 'cello in Gargnano, Italy June of 2013.

This tango is an arrangement of Tango No. 1 of Six Tangos for solo piano. Tango No. 1 is dedicated to Malgosia and her newborn.  I imagined a mother, with a child in her arms, dancing to the rhythm of this tango.  

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Premiere performance by Trio Malipero, Giacomo Dalla Libera, piano, Tommaso Luiso, violin, Giancarlo Trimboli, violoncello, June 18th, 2015 at Teatro alla Specola, Padova, Italy.

Commissioned by Trio Malipiero.

Piano Trio No. 1 (Night of Broken Glass) for the piano trio is a tribute to the children who are often the innocent victims of the tragic and violent actions of men. Although I have referenced the Kristallnacht attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938, I am, in my musical expression, alluding to all senseless demonstrations of violence that often reach catastrophic proportions as they shatter the lives of children. In these three movements, I juxtapose the intensely orchestrated sonorities with two Jewish traditional lullabies*. The themes, only briefly heard as lyric contrasts to the more aggressive music, interweave and develop their own narrative, gaining an increasing emotional weight as the episodes unfold. In addition, there are two “enigma” themes that I use to drive the transformation of the music to its emotional climax.

Premiered April 11th, 201o at  Wentz Concert Hall at North Central College in Naperville, IL

Birds and Phoenix

Wang Guowei, erhu , Yang Wei, pipa
John Bruce Yeh and Teresa Reilly, clarinets.

Commissioned by Birds and Phoenix

I composed this piece imagining myself in a garden of images, sonorities, and aromas that all merge in an idyllic moment in time.  I have taken a line from one of T.S.Eliot’s poems in the Four Quartets, for my title, Other Echoes Inhabit the Garden. The poem, Burnt Norton, concludes with the poignant truth that “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”  I often wonder whether my work as a composer really has any significance or meaning beyond helping my listeners temporarily escape their personal realities.  In recalling Eliot’s line,  “What might have been and what has been/ point to one end, which is always present” I am reminded that a melody, a single line of lyric pitch flow evokes memory in the mind of the listener and that rhythm and accent often draws our attention to the present moving towards the future.  So, with these inherent powers

of music in mind, it was my goal to create a piece of vibrant and engaging music that relentlessly draws the listener into the present moment.  Eliot also alludes to a timeless merging of present and past in this poem. His line, “then a cloud passed and the pool was empty” brought back memories of being a child watching clouds almost unnoticeably move across the sky.  I was similarly inspired to conclude Other Echoes Inhabit the Garden with music that evokes an ecstatic stillness tempered with a longing for the past.  WGN

Birds and Phoenix performing Other Echoes Inhabit the Garden

Premiere performance by Noah Geller, violin at the Julliard School of Music, March 25th, 2006.

The work is inspired by an entry in the Diary of Anne Frank where she daringly leaves the safety of the annex one night to view the night sky-a sky she had not seen for many years.  That night she wrote in her diary:   "It’s not just my imagination on my part that to look up at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars, makes me calm and patient."   Incredibly, during this same period of time, Anne Frank was seeking refuge from the Nazis in the secret annex in Holland, the controversial conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler was conducting Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a series of concerts in Berlin.  The concerts were to provide an escape and sanctuary for the German audience during one of the darkest periods of the war.   Indeed, shortly after the last concert, the concert hall was bombed.  I have extracted a digital sample from  an archive recording of the concert in 1944 of Furtwangler conducting a performance of Bruckner’s 5^th Symphony.  I have created a sound mantra from the dark "shadow" of this audio excerpt. As the piece unfolds, the  violin leads us away from the mantra’s  dark grasp and directs us to look up at the night sky full of stars.

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Performance by Erica Ward at Case Western Reserve University

Premiered at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington July 1984, Michael Lorimer, guitar, Ellen Kahne, flute, and Bob Weber, violoncello

“I composed Fantasia reminiscing on a year I lived in Cologne, Germany. I remembered my disgust with the noise and with the architectural ugliness of a city hastily rebuilt after the war, and, at the same time, I recalled the beauty and the peace of the city’s small, secretive, walled gardens.” William Neil