After graduating he was awarded an Arts Council of
Great Britain Bursary for Composition and moved to
London, working as a freelance music copyist and as
Lecturer in Composition at the City University. Many
of his works received their premieres during this
time from such performers as Sarah Walker, Irvine
Arditti, Gemini, the London Sinfonietta, Lontano,
The Nash Ensemble, Capricorn, and the BBC Singers,
including Humming Harvest Gone Snow Motor which subsequently
won first prize in the Kucyna International Composition
Competition at Boston University in 1985.
In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood,
where he studied with Oliver Knussen. Hammer and
Darkness, Mirror and Knife, written that summer,
was awarded the Tanglewood Prize for Composition.
In 1987 Head Down Legs Up won the Ian Whyte
Award—the prize being a commission for a new
work, Twistification, for the Scottish National
Orchestra, toured by them throughout Scotland in 1988.
In 1990 Sinfonietta was premiered by the Omaha
Symphony Chamber Orchestra as the prize-winning work
in the Omaha Symphony Guild New Music Contest. The
following year Twistification was chosen for
a National Orchestral Association reading under Jorge
Mester.
Commissions include Return to a Place, for
Sanford Sylvan and David Breitman, premiered by them
at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Wetherby
Nocturne, a Barlow Endowment commission for Kathy
Supové premiered at Weill Recital Hall, New
York; Sh´ma commissioned by the Brookline
Chorus in memory of victims of the Holocaust; Five
Little Fly Stories for Alea III; Cleopatra,
for Dominique Labelle; Weegee, for Collage's
twenty-fifth anniversary season; and Actaeon
for Metamorphosen. He has received awards from ASCAP,
the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Richmond International
Festival of New Music, The American Music Center,
and Museum in the Community.
In 1992 he was Composer-in-Residence at Bemidji State
University, the first holder of an Interdisciplinary
Fellowship established by the American Composers Forum
and the Minnesota State University System as part
of a scheme to examine new ways of utilizing creative
artists in college education. During that time, with
over a hundred students, faculty, and townspeople
he created Earth Journey—a multimedia
staged production based upon the many cultural variants
of the Orpheus myth. His two-act comic opera, Freshwater,
was commissioned by the Boston University Opera Institute,
and premiered in December 1994 to great critical success.
Recent performances have included In a Parlor Containing
a Table performed by Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish;
The Reckless Heart commissioned by the BankBoston
Celebrity Series for Kendra Colton; Quartet No.2
premiered at the Portland Chamber Music Festival;
Quartet No.3, commissioned by Chamber Music
America for the Borromeo String Quartet; World
Wheel commissioned by The Cantata Singers; and
Air Baby for Elizabeth Keusch with Boston Musica
Viva. In 1999 he was appointed Composer-in-Residence
to the FleetBoston Celebrity Series: Emerging Artists.
Dark Mother for Triple Helix, was premiered
in April 2000—his first commission for the series.
The Second, Urban Affair, was premiered by
The Boston Trio in March 2001. In fall 2001 he was
appointed Chair of Composition and Theory at The Boston
Conservatory and in fall 2002 Composer-in-Residence
to the New England Philharmonic. 
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