Dune Acres

Dune Acres is an eighteen-and-a-half minute piece for orchestra, with generous support from the Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Ralph N. Jackson commission. The most dazzling place I knew as a kid was my grandparents' house in Northern Indiana's Dune Acres, on the south shore of Lake Michigan. With architectural characteristics of Bauhaus and the International Style, the house was supreme funkytown: cool angles everywhere, half-walls, a bewindowed breakfast nook that jetted out over trees, and the "yard" of dunes and beach. I wrote my first music in Dune Acres, and the house itself ignited my love and study of modern architecture. Our family visited there most summers of my childhood, and when the weather held we spent long lazy mornings at the lake. After lunch, while others napped, I snuck outside and made up songs, sang with the crickets, waves and trees. My grandparents and parents are no longer living, and the music of Dune Acres will serve as a thank-you note to them and the magnificence of our Great Lakes. Dune Acres is where I became a composer, and our visits there housed my discovery of the utter funness of writing music. Sometimes, I went out alone in the rain.