Nocturne for Cello and Piano (2017)

This piece was born at night - not as a lullaby, but as a confrontation.

As a night owl by nature, I’ve always found that the quiet hours invite a different kind of reflection - the kind that brings buried questions to the surface: death, purpose, memory, and mystery. In that space, this Nocturne unfolds. It’s not about sleep, but about the things we avoid when we’re awake.

The cello doesn’t soothe; it wrestles. The piano doesn’t accompany; it provokes. Together, they navigate an interior landscape where tension builds and dissolves, where clarity flickers, and where resolution is neither simple nor certain. The dissonance isn’t just musical, it expresses the friction between what we feel and what we can articulate.

Raised by a psychologist, I’ve long understood that our dreams often carry the weight of what we suppress, translating our conscious lives into a language of symbol and shadow. That deeply informed this work. Though originally titled Cello Sonata, I realized as the premiere neared that it wasn’t a sonata at all. It was something more fragmented, subconscious, and searching: a nocturne in the truest sense.

As a composer, I’m drawn to writing on the edge of what I know, and just beyond it. This piece lives at that edge, exploring the terrain where emotion, memory, and silence collide.