Bit By Bit

On the train from Secaucus, New Jersey to Pennsylvania Station in New York City, you will share a car with another hundred people who will scatter off to find their someone, the next career connection, a Broadway theatre, or their weekend vacation stay. Most of those faces will walk up the flights of stairs onto the city streets and stare at the skyline marveling at its possibilities and then an ambitious few will bang on worn doors until one opens. Those are the few who build the skyline and defy the infinite odds against their art. This theme and variations serve as a fanfare for those who still knock and those who have shown us how to open the doors. The piece evokes the feeling of traveling through New York by train with each variation and texture alluding to the atmospheric changes that occur as you ride through the city.

The Wright Flight

On December 17, 1903, The Wright brothers, two bicycle repairmen defied odds when they became the first to fly the world’s first power-driven, heavier-than-air, human maneuvered machine. Amidst the skepticism of the public in their theories, the awareness of the death that could result from their experiment, and the never-ending doubt by scholars, their 12-second flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina proved that the impossible can be achieved by those willing to find new solutions. Just like the Wright brothers who rose above the public’s doubt, it is the responsibility of any creator to boldly pursue their work to lay the foundation for the next generation of brilliant minds.

Tusaidie

This is a three movement character piece that evokes the beauty and devastation of three endangered species from three different continents: the Entre Ríos Seedeater of South America, the Javan Rhino from Asia, and the Silky Sifaka Lemur from Africa. Each animal is voiced by a different woodwind to represent the differences in voices and narratives between these various species. The purpose of this piece is to give these forgotten animals a voice in hopes that the public might recognize their worth and beauty and take action to save them.

Utuokoe

Utuokoe a three movement character piece that evokes the beauty and devastation of three endangered species from three corners of the world’s vast oceans: the vaquita, the ornate sleeper ray, the Hawaiian monk seal. Each animal is voiced by a different instrument to represent the differences in voices and narratives between these various species. The purpose of this piece is to give these forgotten animals a voice in hopes that the public might recognize their worth and beauty and take action to save them. This piece is a sequel composition to Tusaidie.

Sundays With Shirley

This is a five movement suite for piano that aims to evoke how the brain functions during the five stages of Parkinson's disease according to the Hoehn and Yahr scale. Because no two cases of Parkinson's are exactly alike, the piece instead focuses on simulating five separate occasions in which Mulligan visited his grandmother on Sunday afternoons throughout the last years of her life. The piece was written on her piano which now sits in Mulligan's dining room