"My goal in writing music is to express a personal point of view in a manner as emphatic, compelling and universal as possible. I begin with an inclusive approach to material, celebrating diversity, and embracing heterogeneity with all its contradictions. The materials themselves may be coarse grain— possibly entire musical styles—or thin slices cut at a particular angle. In a kind of 'musical genetic engineering,' I recombine these components to create a hybrid musical organism, expressing something of the diverse multi-dimensional and sometimes fractured nature of contemporary identity. Interrelationships, juxtapositions, connections and collisions form the basis of my musical language.

I draw upon sources as diverse as folk musics from around the world, popular music, jazz and historical Western concert music styles; as well as ideas from nature, literature, visual art, science and philosophy. This merging of seemingly incompatible elements, and the dynamic it sets into motion, give rise to the development and structure of my music.

The results are often surprising, yet paradoxically seem to make an intuitive sense, combining sensibility and bold statement, abstraction and everyday objects. In this manner, I seek to create a poetic music, both startlingly new and hauntingly familiar."— David A. Jaffe

Press

Reviews from Musical America, The San Francisco Examiner, etc.

Selected Writings

Published articles, interviews, etc.

Featured Albums