CWP Portfolio
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1. Orchestral Piece
A Dance With You for Chamber Orchestra (3 min)
This piece was my final project for CW-411 (Writing for Orchestra). I really enjoyed the process of writing this piece and learning about orchestration in Alex Clements’s class. There’s also so many techniques and ideas in this piece that I learned from Amparo Edo Biol in CW-358 (Writing for Wind Ensemble) and Amanda Harberg in CW-321 (Writing for Strings and Woodwinds).
A Dance With You is about the pain of being separated from someone. It’s a beautiful thing to know there’s someone out there who you would dance with if they asked, but it’s a terrible thing to know you’re too far away to take their hand and spin them around.
2. Advertisting Music
Commercial 1
My first commercial is a rescore of an REI commercial that I made in CW-261 (DAW Writing and Production) with Eric Fells.
Commercial 2
My second commercial is a rescore of a Subaru commercial that I made in CW-333 (Studio Writing and Production) with Renato Milone.
3. Vocal Group Piece
Wild Geese for SATB Choir (3 min)
Text used with permission for educational purposes, score and audio not to be published publicly.
Wild Geese is a setting of the Mary Oliver poem of the same name. For this performance, the choir consists of eight vocalists, two per part. This piece was premiered at the Society of Composers concert “Perspectives” on April 10, 2026. Due to technical issues at the show, it was later re-recorded. Thank you to Allie Sowa (soprano), Nova Jimenez (soprano), Emma Stuart (alto), Jennifer Xiao (alto), Raymond Andrus (tenor), Raghav Mangrulkar (tenor), Alexandros Alexandrakis (bass), and Matt Chambers (bass, concert only) for their hard work on this piece. Additional bass vocals by me.
The words of this poem speak for themselves. I think it would be better if we were all to remember them more frequently. And I think it would be better if we flew in a flock together, instead of alone.
4. Contemporary Electronic Track
A Dangerous Expanse
I like to mess around with electronic production in my free-time. This hobby specifically manifests itself as an eternal side project of an album of ambient background music for sci-fi TTRPGs like Starfinder. “A Dangerous Expanse” started as a track for that project, but I brought it to Danny McIntyre in Directed Study this semester and really explored expanding it into a full piece that can be enjoyed on it’s own, not just in the background. It incorporates techniques and concepts I learned in his CW-461 class (Electronic Writing and Production), as well as various other electronic writing and DAW workflows I’ve learned throughout my time at Berklee. This one was just always a fun time, even if I spent ages trying to get that combination low piano, bass, and kick drum sound to be just right. I hope you enjoy it!
5. Ensemble
Stars for String Orchestra (4 min)
This recording of Stars is a hybrid production. It consists of layered recordings of a string quartet, plus multiple MIDI libraries of strings. I created this piece in CW-422 (Advanced Production for Writers) with Nicole Kwan, and worked on a new mix during my Directed Study with Danny McIntyre.
Stars is about the variety of vibrant and important memories I have of people and places that are tied to the stars. The piece is about walking home from the T every night and looking for Orion and the Swan, laying on the grass while working in the Smoky Mountains and having no energy left for anything but the stars and my fellow camp counselors, deciding one night at midnight with friends to drive right then to a state park in Kentucky to look across the water at the dark sky, and a week in Asheville where every night was the last one in an old life. When I look up at the stars, I hear this music, and it still connects me to those previous lives I’ve lived.
6. Artistic/Personal Project
The Mouse - EP
The Mouse is a project very near and dear to my heart. It started as a pitch in my CW-422 class (Advanced Production for Writers) for the capstone project. I insisted to Nicole Kwan that I was going to make a multi-song EP in the style of Alan Parsons Project, based on the novel Nova by Samuel R. Delaney—and I was going to do it all in six weeks, starting completely from scratch. She cautioned me against this (for which I’m grateful) and suggested I focus on one song. So, I created “Fate” for the capstone project. I was very happy to get to return to The Mouse this semester to re-mix “Fate” and expand the concept with two new songs, bringing something similar to the original pitch for the EP into the world. In the end however, the EP is no longer a series of character studies from Nova, it’s much more a mishmash of moments from my life, my thoughts on politics, and concepts from the book.
Thank you to Daniel Chouinard (bass, cello, and arrangement consultant on “Fate”), Charlie Kim (lead guitar on “Fate”), Raymond Andrus (vocals and songwriting consultant on “Fate”), Niko Zontini (drums on “Fate” and “Phone Call”), Emily Sclar (violin on “Fate”), and Asha Henshaw (bass on “Phone Call”). Special thanks to Allie Sowa (songwriting consultant on “Fate” and “Synthetic Sounds”), Anna Melchers (narrative consultant on “Fate” and “Synthetic Sounds”), and Hayden Arthur. Vocals on “Synthetic Sounds” and “Phone Call”, and piano, flute, and MIDI on all songs by me.
When listening to this, I highly recommend that you start by listening to the whole thing, especially since “Synthetic Sounds” and “Phone Call” have a smooth transition between them, no hard cut between the two songs. However, I’ve also included each song as it’s own track in case you’d like to listen to them separately.
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“Fate” almost directly retells the tarot-reading scenes from Nova, but the ambiguity of the characters in the song is intended to allow it to speak more broadly to the political and economic climate in the real-world. The gamblers in “Fate” are partially the crew of Von Ray’s ship in Nova, but they’re also the politicians and billionaires who tell us they know what’s best for us when they take us to war, gamble our economy on AI, and cut us out of the decision-making process. Are they really looking at the logic of their decisions? Who are they trusting to read their tarot? Should they be trusted to read it?
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“Synthetic Sounds” will bear resemblance to scenes from Nova for anyone who has read the book, but they’ll also notice that it includes details that don’t match the book at all. This song is the most personal or autobiographical song on the EP, combining parts of my own life with the some of the themes of Nova.
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“Phone Call” is where the EP finds itself the farthest from Nova. Certain themes in the song are reflections of the novel, but the song mostly deals with the real-world effects of the excessive force, interrogation techniques, and broad immunity of law enforcement, the rising use of facial recognition technology by those agencies, and the lack of substantial federal privacy laws in the US.