Four songs for voice and piano, on verses from the picture books of Kate Greenaway.  I wrote them in 2002.  The verses are: 1.  The Boat Sails Away (Kate Greenaway) 2.  Dirty Jim (Jane and Ann Taylor) 3.  Poor Dicky’s Dead (Kate Greenaway) 4.  The Butterfly (Jane and Ann Taylor) Here’s a snippet of the […]

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This brisk barnstormer was part of my show of the same name, back in 1984.

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My fourth string quartet consists of chorales, fourteen of them. Some of my concerns here were chromatic voice leading, suspensions as concords, and extended chords implied with four voices. Here’s the first one.

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Finally, these two images are conflated.  It’s about time.  

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These seven songs were written in 1999. I was particularly interested in setting metered verse with changing meters, and in a rich two-part texture. Many of them were, inevitably, concerned with loss, given the recent death of my father, and my mother’s declining health (she died shortly afterward). The seven songs are: “Calico Pie” by […]

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In the early ’80s, Bill Irwin, Michael O’Connor and I sometimes worked together under the name “Murdoch.” I don’t remember where the name came from; I think Bill may have dreamed it. In 1981, Bill and I played a run at the Mickery theater in Amsterdam under that name. The photos were by Bob van […]

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“We All Will Do the Hukilau in Heaven” was a bit of lyrical theology, envisioning heaven as a vacation in Hawaii. It was part of a show by Doug and Barb Roesch, American Excess, examining televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. It appeared at NYC’s Middle Collegiate Church in 1986. Barb Roesch did the choreography; […]

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This song was suggested by a photo of a two-headed kitten that appeared in the Fortean Times. You can find it in The Doug Skinner Songbook and on the album That Regrettable Weekend. Here’s how it begins.

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A setting of my own abridged translation of a profoundly disturbing passage in the Fioretti di San Francesco, in which Saint Francis opines that true happiness is being beaten mercilessly with a heavy knotted stick while contemplating Christ’s suffering.

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This photocopied dossier collects 49 pages of my keyboard music. Let me know if you’d like one. The pieces are: Life’s Little Sorrows Mozart at the Cannery Works Waltz Under the Weather Fort in Solrésol Chuff The Scenic Route Stevenson at the Flageolet Lull Lorem Ipsum Dolor Bach Had a Bad Headache The Passing Clouds […]

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