A video from the recording session for my upcoming CD, “Dectet”, which should be available late 2012. Check out the wonderful solos by Alan Ferber and Leonard Thompson. The rest of the band includes Bob Sheppard, Phil O’Connor, Ben Wendel, John Daversa, George Thatcher, Mark Ferber, and Damian Erskine.
The four texts in this cycle are excerpts from a very long six-volume poem by Lucretius (ca. 99- 55 BCE) in which he describes the details of Epicurean philosophy. In simple terms, this is a philosophy of the physical world, one in which all things are made up of tiny Read more…
Here’s a link and a “reprint” of an article on the Pacific Serenades web site, in preparation for the premiere of my new song cycle: Composer Profile: Justin Morell by Mark Carlson It’s as if playing jazz guitar were in his genes—Justin Morell is a fourth generation professional jazz Read more…
I’m very excited to announce the premiere of my new work, “Four Songs on excerpts from Lucretius’s On the Nature of the Universe“, on the Pacific Serenades concert series in Los Angeles. The piece is for baritone and string quartet, and will feature some incredible LA musicians: Michael Dean, bass-baritone Read more…
Fugue as we think of it today dates back to the baroque period (c. 1600-1750) when it became not simply an imitative contrapuntal technique but a type of musical composition with a somewhat rigorous structural process. The term “process” is often favored over the term “form” to describe fugue because Read more…