Education/Early Career: entered The Juilliard School Pre-College Division at age eight for one year, later, B.S. and M.S. degrees from Juilliard in composition and piano, studying with Vincent Persichetti, Roger Sessions, and Luciano Berio. Held the Richard Rodgers scholarship for a year, was granted a Teaching Fellowship at Juilliard, and subsequently joined the Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music faculties while still a student, retiring from institutional teaching at twenty-two. New York piano debut at Carnegie Hall, 1983, performing works of J. S. Bach, Charles Ives, Cole Porter, and Lawrence Rosen. Student/Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center for one summer. Assistant to Italian composer Luciano Berio in Rome for a year, composing, arranging, performing, and conducting throughout Western Europe. Musical Associate/Ghost Composer to Gian Carlo Menotti during the creation of his late opera Goya, c. 1986.

Theater/Film: composer in residence and musical director, Williamstown Theater Festival, composing incidental music for several mainstage plays starring (among many others) Frank Langella, Blythe Danner and Joel Grey, and creating a weekly cabaret-style review. Music and Lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera (original American production at the Hirschfeld Theater,) subsequently over 50 productions, Carbonell award, movie (a film of the stage version) of same on PBS, première at the 57th Street Playhouse (now the Directors Guild Theater.) Platoon: created a version for piano of Samuel Barber’s  Adagio for Strings for the film and for print publication. Created an original two-character musical,  He Loves and She Loves, based entirely on the music and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin. Arrangements for Duke Ellington’s  Black and Blue on Broadway, with an original piano-vocal version of Come Sunday published by G. Schirmer, Inc.  Relatively Speaking (Alan Ayckbourn), incidental  music for a revival. Co-arranger and musical director for Almost Like Being In Love, a Diahann Carroll one woman show featuring the music and lyrics of Lerner and Loewe.  Aida (John/Rice/Disney): associate orchestrator, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York productions. Music and Lyrics for  06880 : The Musical: an original musical, premièred at the Seabury Center, Westport, CT, subsequent productions at Yale, the Samuel Beckett and York Theaters in New York, and recipient of the Moss Hart award of the New England Theater Conference - Best Musical.

Other: Sterling Patron Award for contributions to American music, Steinway Hall, 1997. 2010-11: one of 17 notable composers chosen for inclusion in the choral series  Mr. President (composing a vocal quartet on words of Thomas Jefferson) premièred on NPR, published by Subito Music, 2014. Former Editor-In-Chief for Piano, The Schirmer Library of Musical Classics. Member, the Dramatists Guild. Member ASCAP, permanent member of the ASCAP Special Classification Committee. Over 50 original compositions, arrangements, transcriptions in print (or, out of print), including concert paraphrases of The Songs of Stephen Foster, 2001, as well as solo piano versions of Fauré’s Dolly Suite, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, all published by G. Schirmer. Special Projects Editor, CD Sheet Music Library, a comprehensive catalog of scores in digital format, published by Subito Music Corporation. Latest: Music and Lyrics for the new musical  Gatsby, An American Musical, in collaboration with Daniel Landon, adapted from the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel (see below.)  Recently completed, also with Daniel Landon, a new, original musical, Dream On. Also recently completed: scenario, music, and lyrics for two “Dramatorios:” Thanksgiving At Molly’s, and Peacefield, both for a cast of soloists and chorus.  The Accompaniment Studio (a Subito Music Corporation product): created and recorded a series of several hundred piano accompaniments of masterworks for learning, study, practice, and performance. Contracted by the Gershwin Estate (and in association with publisher Subito Music) to create a new piano-vocal score for DuBose Heyward and George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, based on the definitive version of the complete opera by Wayne Shirley of Yale University and The Library of Congress, Metropolitan Opera première in 2020. By arrangement with G. Schirmer, Inc., and the estate of Sergei Prokofiev, copyright holders, creation of an original version for the musical stage based upon Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf, and  Lucky, a one-act prequel to the Peter And The Wolf  musical stage version, with original scenario/libretto, music, and lyrics. Recently completed the book, music, and lyrics for an original musical comedy-drama, Eternal Stages, about the early days of the Yiddish Theater in America. 2021: Book, Music, and Lyrics for an original, two-character musical, Central Park Bench. From the 1924 original Gershwin/Whiteman/Grofé première score, creation of an updated, contemporary version of Rhapsody in Blue, published  in the Spring of 2022. August, 2022: world première of the new musical, Gatsby, An American Musical (see above,) with a cast of 25 at the Woodstock Playhouse, Woodstock, NY. For the New England chamber music and educational group Sempre Musick, The Bach Projects: creation of a version for solo keyboard, added harpsichord/continuo, and string orchestra of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Italian Concerto, 1st movement  premièred Spring, 2023. Versions for small, diversified mixed ensembles of the complete 15 Two-Part Inventions of J. S. Bach. My First Chamber Music: a series of 18 short transcriptions and arrangements of a diversified group of well-known compositions, for piano and several instruments. Designed to introduce young musicians to the experience of playing chamber music, the series is carefully graded over the intermediate level, and each piece features piano with a selected few instruments. The makeup of the small ensembles varies from piece to piece.

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