Roddy has been a tremendous inspiration for me in the past few years, and I have admired his musicianship and incredible drumming facility ever since I encountered his recorded work with numerous extreme metal bands, his videos via YouTube, and more recently bought and studied his fantastic and comprehensive book The Evolution of Blast Beats. A simple YouTube search will provide many staggering videos of Roddy performing, but here is a link to one of my personal favorites.

Cornell University Wind Ensemble music director Cynthia Johnston Turner will be conducting the premiere and was kind enough to provide this opportunity for me to explore a compositional idea I've had germinating for years. I'm thrilled about the musical possibilities of a pairing like this.

The concert will also feature the world premiere of a new piece by Christopher Stark, a great composer and friend of mine studying at Cornell.

In addition to this concert, the two commissioned pieces I mentioned in my previous blog entry have been completed and are awaiting their respective premieres, as can be seen in the Upcoming Shows section.

The end of November/beginning of December will constitute the most premieres (and perhaps even performances) I've ever received in the span of less than a month!