A five-part round, setting a French proverb on the danger of eating eggs.

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I’m currently collecting my cartoons of imaginary musical instruments, which appeared in the PDF magazine Le Scat Noir, into a book. I also drew some new ones. Here are a few.  

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A musical cryptogram is written like a substitution cipher, by assigning another pitch to each pitch. The result has the same rhythm and repetitions as the original, but with different pitches. I chose the minuet from Bach’s third French Suite because I like it, and because it uses all twelve pitches. Here’s the first page.

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I’ll be part of the lineup for Profane Illuminations, a day of talks at NYU organized by Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press. I’ll present my talk “Music from Elsewhere,” discussing and playing music attributed to fairies, trowies, banshees, aliens, spirits, and angels; as well as music from alchemists, occultists, Cathars, cryptographers, secret societies, and […]

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My talk on anomalous music, “Music from Elsewhere,” was recorded by Morbid Anatomy, and is now available on their Patreon site, here. I’ll be doing another talk, with different music, April 27 at NYU, as part of the Profane Illuminations series organized by Strange Attractor Books.

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A cheerful little song about antisociality. I often performed it in the ’90s, with Carol Benner playing a lively pizzicato obbligato on viola.

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Another piece from my student days: a jaunty march for nine instruments, or some combination thereof, made up of ostinati. I performed it a few times back then, especially as a string quartet. Here’s the title page, flute part, and oboe part:

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This piece for violin and piano, in a slightly different form, originally served as the overture for “Harlequin and His Master Wed,” the second half of Bill Irwin’s show The Harlequin Studies, produced by the Signature Theater in 2003. I eliminated the drum part, and came up with a shorter title.

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Here, for the holidays, is a song about the many sterling qualities of Santa Claus. It’s also the only song I’ve written in Italian. It begins: Babbo Natale pranza in letto. Babbo Natale balla sul tetto. Babbo Natale evita le frotte. Babbo Natale viaggia di notte. Santa Claus eats in bed. Santa Claus dances on […]

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Another piece from my student days: a brief outburst for flute, ‘cello, and piano four hands. I was 17 at the time.

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