Music begins for me with a sense of something just out of reach—a shape or logic I cannot name, but feel compelled to follow.

At the heart of my work is a structural principle: each harmonic environment is defined not by the intervals it contains, but by one it excludes. This deliberate omission—what I call a lacuna—creates a field of tension that governs motion, transformation, and return. It acts as a kind of gravitational absence, a site of constraint and potential.

But the lacuna is not only formal—it is poetic. It becomes a metaphor for yearning: a missing element that gives the music its forward pressure, its identity in motion. Like a vanishing point in visual perspective, it draws the music toward itself without ever appearing. What results is not closure, but continuity—a strand that remembers how to change.

Over time, the music sheds its original material but retains its internal shape. Every note may be new, yet the voice persists. This is the kind of form I trust: not fixed, but faithful.

I feel my music follows in the footsteps of  composers like Tadeusz Baird, Alban Berg, and Luigi Dallapiccola—artists whose work blends precision with lyrical intensity. At a deeper level, my thinking is shaped most profoundly by J.S. Bach and Witold Lutosławski: by the logic of voice-leading, the ethics of form, and the discipline of invention. Their work affirms that constraint can become expression—that structure, when rightly held, allows something human to emerge.

I hold a Ph.D. in music composition and theory from New York University, and currently teach at Temple University and Saint Joseph’s University. My work combines research, pedagogy, and creative practice—each informing the others in ways I continue to explore.

What I compose is not governed by a system, but by a grammar—a set of principles that serve expression rather than abstraction. The grammar is strict, but the speech is free.