Composition Lessons

My studio's mission is EMPOWERING MUSICAL ARTISTS

Why study with me? 

• I offer a supportive, personalized teaching approach.
• I empower my students to write their very best music in their most genuine, authentic artistic voice, regardless of musical style.
• I am an experienced composer with dozens of commissions and hundreds of performances by a variety of ensembles including Third Angle New Music, Access Contemporary Music, Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland, Coe College Symphony Orchestra, the Glass City Singers, Duward Ensemble, Delgani String Quartet, flutist Rose Bishop, and pianist Michael Kirkendoll.
• I have extensive knowledge of instruments and voices, including standard and experimental techniques.
• I am an accomplished performer of contemporary classical music with knowledge of notation needs for performers. 
• I have a wide network of new music performers and composition professors at leading collegiate programs.
• I am a highly educated teacher with a Masters of Music in Composition and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Voice Performance & Pedagogy. In addition, I trained at the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, California. 
• My studio welcomes and affirms LGBT+ students.

In the composition studio, we develop composing / songwriting in a variety of genres, based on student interest, from pop/rock/indie music to string quartets to operas. I teach composition using a combination of exercises, feedback and drafts of pieces, and score / recording study of works to help you gain context for the music you are writing. We explore ways to generate ideas, develop pieces and shape their form, expand the material from your first idea into music that can fill a whole piece, and how to be sure your ideas are coming across to performers and audiences. I teach instrumentation and orchestration: how to write effectively for each instrument and how to balance those instruments to create the sound world you're imagining, and am a particular expert in how to compose for voices, including classical songs, pop songs, choral music, and operas. If your goal is to hand the piece off to performers, we will also take a close look at your notation, scores, and parts to be sure your musicians will understand your ideas and use rehearsal time effectively.

Without fail, composers also want to develop skills at getting their work in front of audiences. I teach networking, how to pitch projects, and how to negotiate fees for commissions and score sales. We will look closely at the music you're writing to understand who it is for, and who will most likely want to play or sing it. We will also examine your own 'bench' of musicians - who do you already know who could give you a fabulous performance of your music? Composers in my studio have polished and premiered their first opera, negotiated their first 4-digit commission, successfully pitched their first paid commission to an ensemble, applied for and won grant money to record an album of their music, and more. 

My studio includes teenagers diving into songwriting for the first time, emerging professionals with collegiate and graduate degrees in composition who want to grow their professional catalog and book commissions, and adult composers and songwriters who came to composing through a nontraditional path, sometimes later in life.