This page is a living snapshot of what currently has my attention — not what I’ve finished, not what I’m promoting, but what feels active, unresolved, and worth care right now. It changes as my priorities change.
February 2026
I’m in a season of consolidation and clarity. Less output. More intention. Fewer gestures. Sharper ones.
This isn’t about pulling back. It’s about choosing carefully — and standing behind those choices.
What I’m Making
In November, I recorded a new album of vocal chamber music. It’s pared back, composed, and politically awake.
It marks a clear turn in my work: away from jazz as a primary identity, and toward a fully notated, contemporary classical language shaped by jazz harmony, classical articulation, and disciplined restraint.
Improvisation lives mostly at the edges. The center of the music is fixed, architectural, and slow to open. It asks for patience — from the performers and from the listener.
The ensemble is anchored by bass-baritone Rod Nelman, whose operatic voice carries much of the emotional gravity of the project, paired with cello as a second, shadowed voice. Together they hold texts that confront human rights, climate collapse, gun violence, racial justice, and civic responsibility.
This album is not neutral.
It reflects a conscious shift toward the role of artist-citizen — using composition not just as expression, but as witness, refusal, and invitation. I’ve written music for music’s sake. This is something else.
The release is planned for later this year.
What I’m Building Alongside It
Alongside the album, I’m returning — briefly and intentionally — to large ensemble writing, composing new big band charts for vocalist Atla DeChamplain. After several years working largely outside the jazz idiom, this feels less like nostalgia and more like recalibration.
In April, I’ll premiere Jazz & Justice Suite: A Declaration in Seven Movements, a collaboration between the UConn Jazz Faculty and UConn’s Human Rights Institute. Each movement addresses a specific human rights concern — from political participation and racial justice to environmental advocacy, gender equity, and access to education.
This is music that insists on thought. It doesn’t resolve easily, and it isn’t meant to.
What My Family’s Up To
Jana is deep into her M.A. in Peace & Justice, and our home has become a place where research, ethics, and lived experience regularly intersect — often informally, sometimes uncomfortably, and usually around the dinner table.
Our kids are doing the hard, ordinary work of becoming themselves. They’re learning how to navigate pressure, possibility, and uncertainty in their own ways. I’m grateful to be present for that — and hopeful that I can be steady, useful, and loving in the ways that actually matter.
How I Reset
I continue to run — not as performance, but as release. The miles give me room to think, to breathe, and to let the noise settle.
After a failed Boston qualification attempt, I shifted my focus toward shorter distances. Speed, efficiency, and recovery feel aligned with where I am right now. Running gives me something physical to obsess over, a counterweight to art-making and the troubling times we’re living in, and a way to return clearer than I left.
What I’m Learning to Trust
My spiritual life is still in flux — not because it’s thin, but because it’s active.
I no longer identify with evangelical Christianity, particularly where it has chosen power, exclusion, and political allegiance over humility, compassion, and intellectual honesty.
What I’m moving toward instead is a faith shaped by curiosity, doubt, and ethical seriousness. One that welcomes questions. One that centers human dignity. One that understands love as action, not alignment.
I’m also learning to trust my own reading and experience. Years spent with scripture and theology have given me enough grounding to know that my perspective is not careless or uniformed, even if it no longer fits neatly under someone else’s authority.
I’m less interested in productivity than precision.
Less interested in consensus than integrity.
The work going forward reflects that — imperfectly, but deliberately.
What is a “Now Page”?
A now page is a public way of saying: this is what I’m actually paying attention to right now. Not a feed. Not a résumé. Just an honest snapshot, updated as the season changes.
My now page lives here: nownownow.com/p/6dM7