Year: 2011

Duration (in minutes): 10

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: larger chamber ensembles - more than 4 players

Instruments: any brass, any string, any woodwind, bassoon, cello, clarinet, contrabass, flute, horn, oboe, viola, violin

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: Revelations was completed in May 2010 and was written for the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra conducted by Max Lifchitz. The piece was inspired by the music of Alan Hovhaness and infused with excerpts from a lost piano fantasy that I had written many years before. The work carries the title Revelations since the themes came to me prior to falling asleep.

Year: 2009

Duration (in minutes): 10'39;

Category: piano

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: Sketches is a collection of three piano pieces, each suggesting a general image or picture to the listener. The work was written for Max Lifchitz, pianist, composer, conductor and founder of North/South Consonance, an organization devoted to performance and recording of contemporary music from the Americas. Max gave the world premiere performance of Sketches in April 2010 at Christ and St. Stephen's Church in New York City. The first piece in the collection, “Escapade”, is a playful piece that takes the listener on a lighthearted adventure. The next piece, “Daydream”, is more relaxed and carries this title because of the manner in which ideas came to me. The last piece, “Tarantella”, is my way of paying homage to my Italian roots. The tarantella, is a lively, whirling southern Italian dance for couples usually in 6/8 time.

Year: 2008

Duration (in minutes): 4'39;

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: choral

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: I Am, for SATB choir and organ, was completed was completed in spring 2008 during my graduate studies at Purchase College. The piece was written for the Purchase College Choir. I Am is a personification of music and describes the very nature of this art form. The text is written in first person from the point of view of music.

Year: 2007

Duration (in minutes): 7'39;

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: orchestra and chamber orchestra

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: Grabbing the brass ring or reaching for the brass ring is an expression commonly used today which refers to striving toward a goal or prize. This expression originated from the carousel game. Typically rings were hung off to the side of the carousel and the object was for everyone to stretch out as far as they could and grab one. Some of the rings were steel and some were brass. If one were fortunate to grab one of the brass rings, he/she won a prize: another ride on the carousel for free!
This work was for me, a golden opportunity since I had never written a work for a brass group like this. Once I was offered the chance, I immediately began working toward my goal of composing a piece for this exceptional brass group. Brass Ring consists of three sections. The first section is based on a rhythmic theme while the second section is based on a theme slightly mellower. The third and final section is a return to the first section with some ideas varied. Thus, this brass work is “round” in structure as well.

Year: 2006

Duration (in minutes): 10'39;

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: piano

Publisher: Imagine Music Publishing

Description: Spectrum: Seven Preludes for Piano was inspired by a work by the American artist, Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923). The composer writes, "When I was a freshman in college, I saw his work entitled Spectrum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work consisted of thirteen large panels, and each contained a different color or shade of color. The first panel was yellow and the last was yellow. To me this work was a visual representation of a chromatic scale played one full octave up the piano keyboard. Five years after the magnificent sighting at the Met, I decided that I wanted to make an audio representation of the seven colors of the rainbow, each represented by a different tonality or pitch center: A being red, B orange, C yellow, D green, E blue, F indigo, and G violet."
Spectrum abandons the use of the conventional major-minor key systems and instead uses a scale which the composer invented called the Castellonian Mode. In it’s original form the scale is spelled C D E F G G# (or Ab) A Bb C. The sound of this new tonal system exhibits both major and minor-like qualities and yet has a new sonority of its own. The Castellonian Mode was invented in the summer of 2004 and has served as the basis of many of her tonal compositions.

Year: 2006

Duration (in minutes): 10'39;

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: percussion ensemble, percussion quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: percussion

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: Snapshots is a collectiono of five short pieces. The percussion instruments used in this piece are all everyday objects that can be found anywhere. These “instruments” include glass jars, tin cans, a plastic bucket, and a large wooden block. They were chosen for their varied timbres and individual sounds.

Year: 2004

Duration (in minutes): 1'39;05'39;'39;

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: piano

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: Conflicting Colors was inspired by a painting, Contrasting Sounds by the Russian abstract artist, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), The composition was, for me, my first major exploration of color and sound. The piano work originally consisted of three short pieces; a fourth was added later on, which is the one featured here. In this piece, as well as the others, the idea of conflicting colors is used to illustrate the concept of bitonality or the use of two different tonalities sounding simultaneously.

Year: 2003

Duration (in minutes): 2

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: piano

Publisher: Castellano Music

Description: While a student studying music at Manhattanville College, the music and ideas of Alexander Scriabin inspired me to compose this work. Completed in 2003, this piece was a way for me to pay homage to the composer. Scriabin had always envisioned a unification of all the arts, especially, the unification of music and color. He based many of his later compositions on a six-note chord, which he called the "mystic" chord (spelled C F# Bb E A D). The pitches of the "mystic chord are used as the basis of this composition