These are a few of my favourite pieces...

Here are a few of the pieces that have influenced and affected me the most.

Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring
The piece that started it all for me, so I can’t really be objective about this piece. When I heard it I knew that this was my world, that this is what I wanted to do! The dance of the adolescent girls is heavier and more savage than anything Metallica has ever written. There is not a single part of this piece that is not worth listening to or studying.

John Williams, Star Wars
There are some obvious Rite of Spring rip-offs in this score, among others, and now that I am older I can hear that. But this music is probably the reason I am a composer today. When I was a boy I spent countless hours, lying in front of my mother's record player listening to that score. I even recorded it on a cheap Radio Shack cassette player so I could listen to it before going to bed. I still have that LP and I still know every single note from that score.

Jacob Druckman, Aureole and Chiaroscuro
The orchestration in these pieces is something truly special. It only deals with colour, something I don’t care for when it's done all by itself,. but the sounds he gets out of the orchestra are truly phenomenal! They come directly from electronic music, but sound much, much better in their orchestral form.

Maurice Ravel, Le Tombeau de Couperin
These pieces, what can I say, gems of pure, simple, untainted perfection. Ravel was a master of form, effect, melody. I want to be like him. (Except for the fact that he liked to dress up and wear make-up...)

J.S. Bach, Inventions and Sinfonias
I love playing the inventions especially, they are like composition blueprints. I have obscenely analyzed quite a few of these, pored over every detail of their construction. Analyzing Bach is like a religious experience for me. It gives me this great feeling of the awe, of touching the divine.