For the Calendar Years 2010-2011, I’ve been awarded the Norwegian “Kunstnerstipend” (artists stipend), the most sought-after grant in Norway for artists.  The stipend comes in the form of a monthly salary which allows the recipients the space to focus on their artistic development.

My two year focus will center around the unpublished/unreleased music of  ECM recording artist Ralph Towner.  Towner is a guitarist/pianist/composer who is one of the founding members of the  legendary Jazz Ensemble Oregon. He is one of the most individual and influential voices in the world of guitar.

The Newman-Oltmann duo released a CD which features three pieces (Silly Songs) I co-composed with Rami Vamos during my undergrad years at Oberlin.  The CD also features the music of R. Sierra, D Bogdanovic, L. Liebermann, A.R. Thomas and M. Karmon.   The Daedelos String Quartet is also featured

Spanish composers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries found themselves torn between two almost irreconcilable poles of musical influence, those of Spanish nationalism and French modernism. The musical and artistic magnetism of Paris was inescapable for European composers in the nineteenth-century. Indeed by the time Isaac Albeniz arrived there to pursue childhood piano studies in 1867, Paris had already been the musical capital of Europe for some forty years.

(more…)