Receiving Grant for "Adirondack Sketches"

It is with great excitement to announce that I have been selected to receive a 2018 Individual Artist Grant from the Saratoga Arts Community Arts Grants program. The grants supports a composition project I’m titling Adirondack Sketches. My goal with Adirondack Sketches it to write a series of musical portraits that are suitable for the concert hall utilizing themes based on traditional Adirondack folk music, combining traditional Adirondack folk instruments such as the hammered dulcimer, fiddle, with piano and possibly other western instruments. My composition process will have me researching the traditional instruments, their techniques (both traditional and extended), tuning, resonance, and the playing styles and uses in the musical tradition of the Adirondack Mountain Region. My work will have me meeting with the musicians of this tradition, historians and ethnomusicologists who have had an interest in this region. Ultimately, I’ll combine these traditions, techniques and styles with my own compositional styles and then share these Adirondack Sketches in a public interactive forum. I will also share various parts of my creative journey along the way here on my website, so stay tuned….

The Grant Awards reception is on April 5th. I’m looking forward to getting started!

P.S. You can click here to sign up to receive updates on the project.

Saratoga Arts made this program possible with an Artist Grant funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.