Apart from my calling as a scholar, I try to maintain a life outside of the academy. Growing up in the Boston area, I took up the violin in second grade, later switching to the viola in high school. I also sang and acted throughout elementary and secondary school, thereby getting a broad introduction to musicals and operettas from Pinafore to West Side Story, from both musical and dramatic perspectives. I also sang tenor in madrigal groups, choruses, and barbershop/doo-wop groups, cooly crooning "When You Wore a Tulip" in a straw hat. 

 

On Saturdays, I took classes from 9 to 5 at New England Conservatory's Prepartory School, studying solfège, theory, analysis, composition, chamber music, chorus, orchestra, and viola. One propitious year I sat principal viola in the Northeast District Orchestra, which was a competitive orchestra that included the entire Boston area. I also played in Ben Zander's orchestra, then called the NEC Youth Symphony Orchestra. My viola playing became quite good in college, when I studied with Peter Slowik, and I still play a bit today, sometimes even in an Appalachian old-time jam.

 

Spurning my childhood hero Jacques Cousteau when I went to college, I swerved away from a career in oceanography or neuroscience in order to major in English, with a focus on poetry, and music, with a focus on composition. After graduating, I worked at NEC Prep for a year before taking off for a Wanderjahr in Germany. Upon completing a course on Berg's operas with famed musicologist Leo Treitler in Basel, I asked him whether I should go to graduate school in theory, composition, or musicology. He said "Musicology!" and sealed my fate of combining my undergraduate majors: I write about contemporary music. 

 

In graduate school at UC Berkeley, I chose to specialize in the music of Olivier Messiaen because his values, I thought, could nourish me. Instead of embodying midcentury angst like most of his contemporaries, Messiaen composed music of joy, color, wonder, and love. I chose well: not long after I graduated, the 2008 Messiaen centenary celebrations kept me quite busy early in my career, and I won the Pisk Prize, a prestigious national award. I've also pursued another Messiaenic value, co-founding the Ecomusicology Study Group of the American Musicological Society to study the interconnections of music, nature, and culture. I remain active in this group.

 

When I take a break these days, I might indulge in my Beatlemania, or in a 1930s musical like 42nd Street, or an Astair-Rogers flick. I might go for a run, or cook (often Turkish cuisine), or dive into some Shakespeare. Or go to a concert, work for Chamber Music Pittsburgh, play my viola, practice traditional target archery, compare dictionary entries of obscure words, drown myself in Rita's frozen custard, or read up on American history, or Sufism, or Gaudí, or August Wilson. Most recently, I've immersed myself in ancient history, Greeks to Romans, Persians to Egyptians, in preparation for writing a libretto on the life of Alexander the Great. It's a great big world and I feel I'm doing a good job taking it all in and giving a little back.