In big news, I was awarded a 2025 Fromm Music Foundation commission. I will be composing a percussion quartet with the Colin Currie Quartet in the UK.
Full Press Release Here
Inspiration doesn't come from waiting | tTt Music Talk
In this interview, we delve into a question that nearly every creator grapples with repeatedly: how to find your own voice.
Where Does Inspiration Come From? A Conversation with Composer Robert Honstein | tTt Music Talk
Such a wonderful interview! And thorough discussion of Soul House’s inspiration and meaningfulness, the wildness of Juvenalia, the compositional process of play and choice, Evergreen as a connection to nature, and collaboration dynamics.
On Saturday, December 20th, Rocket City New Music premieres my Everything, Anywhere for large chamber ensemble at Avilution Hanger in Huntsville, AL.
Concert Blurb
Rocket City New Music once again transforms an airplane hangar into a concert hall for our 2025 Season Finale, Please Repeat The Question. World-class musicians from across the country gather in Huntsville to explore some of the most fundamental yet confounding aspects of the human experience through art. We don’t promise answers—but we never stop asking the questions.
Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question (1908)
David Lang - Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993, rev. 1995)
Ted Hearne - The Answer to the Questions That Wings Ask (2016)
Gregory Vajda - Pulitzer Portrait (2025)
Robert Honstein - Everything, Anywhere (2025)
Julius Eastman - Stay On It (1973)
Program Notes
Everything, Anywhere for eight instruments, is a meditation on the human arc inspired by the memory of Paul C. Blau. The piece reflects on the idea of a life well-lived—one filled with deep connections, meaningful experiences, and insatiable curiosity.
The composition’s three contrasting movements trace a journey from anxious beginnings to joyful affirmation. The first, Wanderlust, portrays a potent mixture of promise and anxiety, echoing the turbulent ebb and flow of youth. Driving rhythms, sudden textural shifts, and yearning melodic interjections express this volatile energy.
The second movement, Doubt, is a solitary contemplation. Unresolved chords circulate in pulseless, hazy progressions, painting a nocturnal image of growing disquiet and lingering uncertainty.
Finally, the last movement, Bounce Back, is a vibrant, joyful reaffirmation. The instability of the previous music gives way to an overflowing sense of love and vitality as the rhythmic, ebullient music bounds to a brilliant conclusion.
Everything, Anywhere was commissioned by Rocket City New Music with the generous support of Constance Blau in loving memory of Paul C. Blau. It was premiered December 20, 2025 at Avilution in Huntsville, Alabama by Rocket City New Music.
|
Interview on Hong Kong “PBS” about my portrait concert and percussion music with The Up:strike Project, featuring a performance of one sonnet with percussionist Matthew Lau and soprano Joanne Shao!
The performance scores are available as a PDF Version and On-Demand Print.
As a part of my residency in Hong Kong with The Upstrike:Project, my Sonnets for Soprano, Percussion and Piano was premiered as a part of my portrait concert. I performed piano with Matthew Lau on percussion and soprano Joanne Shao. Since NoExit premiered the first chamber ensemble version in 2023, I’ve added three new songs. The performance scores are available as a PDF Version and On-Demand Print.
Photos Credit: Jeff Cheng (IG handle: ffejc)
Program Notes
Ever since a quixotic beauty caught the eye of an itinerant, 14th century ex-priest, the sonnet has been to poetic expressions of love as bread is to butter. It is an almost protean form, something so innate that whether or not Petrarch fell for his Laura a similar structure would surely have emerged in some other guise at nearly the same time. While the language and style of sonneteers continuously evolves, this timeless form has retained its grip on poetic minds for centuries. From Shakespeare and Donne to Rilke and Neruda, the sonnet persists as a deft expression of human experience in all its vicissitudes. Into the pressure cooker of its compact formal apparatus, the complexity, ambiguity and chaos of humanity emerges reshaped and reborn into powerfully concise, crystalline poetic expression.
Writing in the first half of the 20th century, Edna St. Vincent Millay vigorously takes up this tradition.At a time of high poetic modernism, Millay injects the ancient form with vitality and stylistic ingenuity. In her hands the sonnet feels fresh and urgent. The words are organic and vital, yet also surgically precise in their layered meaning, wit and sheer beauty. Millay’s sonnets are shifting and bold, fearlessly expressing a radically feminine perspective, while at the same time gesturing towards universal themes of love and desire. In writing my piece, Sonnets, I primarily wanted to foreground Millay’s brilliant words. The poetry is so good, so captivating, direct and powerful that it seemed my job, as composer, was simply to provide a musical scaffolding for Millay’s candescent verse. To that end I’ve put together five songs that hopefully allow you to appreciate and be moved by these beautiful words.
Sonnets was commissioned by the No Exit New Music Ensemble. The first five songs were premiered April 7, 2023 at SPACES in Ohio City, OH by Lauren Pearl, Soprano, and the No Exit New Music Ensemble.