Dev Jana is a talented dude. I first knew him as a video game designer, but it turns out he plays a ton of instruments and sings! He covered "No Turning Back" from my upcoming album 2020, and I think of it as the equivalent of Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help From My Friends" – more raw energy and cooler than the original!
Last night I got to hear a wonderful performance of a new quintet composition of mine. I wrote it in hopes that I'll be picked for a trip to Cuba through the American Composers Forum. The ensemble Third Sound is going to perform pieces from a few lucky composers, who will also travel to Cuba.
Last week, my friends Franco Holder and Charles Asch recorded this cello and piano duet I wrote for them. They're incredible performers, and they make this sound like the best composition I've written.
In our latest composing quest, we were challenged by the Minnesota Suzuki Flute Teachers Association to write flute choir pieces that could be played by beginner, intermediate, and advanced students at the same time. I thought that was a cool challenge, and I decided to start with the Japanese children's song "Kagome Kagome," which means "bird in a cage."
We recently had our first ever Composer Quest concert at Yoga Sol. The Twin Cities Trio performed some awesome listener-submitted arrangements of pop tunes and film/video game scores for bassoon, clarinet, and oboe. We also got to hear the indie pop duo Matt & Donna Schubbe, indie rocker Peter Frey of Kazyak, and indie folker Paul Spring. Here's a special Composer Quest podcast episode with highlights from the concert.
I wrote this original piano piece for the first New Age Salon performance hosted by The Schubert Club. This group of musicians, painters, poets, dancers, and composers was organized by Fidelis Odozi and inspired by the salons of centuries past. We tried to capture that same feeling of artists collaborating and sharing their ideas in a relaxed setting.
My cousin Joe Graves' songwriting skills somehow flew under the radar in my family, until he finally performed some of his songs this past Christmas. In Composer Quest Episode 36, Joe plays and talks about the music he wrote for his band Goodnight Gorillas. He was inspired to make dark music by his older brothers Matt and Nate (Ep. 4), but he's been developing his own singing and songwriting style. Joe shares some of his lyrical inspiration, including a story about a famine in North Korea that forced some people to dig up dead bodies for food.
Cyborg percussion ensemble Jazari was created by "token human" Patrick Flanagan. He made a kind of robot drum circle that beats on acoustic bongos, cowbells, a djembe, and more. In episode 32 of Composer Quest, Patrick talks with me about his robot band, his day job creating musical iPhone apps, and his reasons for leaving the academic composing world to create dance music.
If you've been following my musical history, you'll recall that back in February my friend Nick Syman and I resurrected our experimental improv group Cagetones to complete the RPM Album-in-a-Month Challenge. We recently had the opportunity to play our first live set together in four years, at the Continue reading... 
Nick and I got together again on Wednesday and recorded a trombone trio he composed for our RPM Challenge album. I wasn't totally convinced when he first played the idea for me on a MIDI keyboard. It sounded sort of interesting, but the harmonies seemed kind of random. As soon as we started recording Continue reading...