Over the last several years, I have had the opportunity to perform in a number of locations on my chosen instrument, the tuba.

I knew I wanted to be a tubist from an early age, and as I walked down that path, I began to focus on contemporary music.

This CD is a document of my life as a tubist, covering from 2015 to 2019.

About each track:

'Piernikiana' is a work that I first heard about while an undergraduate student at the University of Northern Iowa. My professor, Dr. Jeff Funderburk, is a great proponent of new music, and knowing that I was very much enamored with all kinds of new music, he shared with me an album by the monumentally-important Polish tubist Zdzisław Piernik. This was my introduction to Piernik, and he remains one of my most important musical influences. This work, titled after the performer himself, embodies everything that he stands for as a performer: a wild exploration of alternative playing techniques, a sense of drama and musical expression, and a performative flair that is as important as the sounds themselves.

Back when I was in high school, I loved to look through various online and physical music catalogues, searching out the most obscure pieces of tuba repertoire I could find. I would then place an order with the fine folks at the music store Thompson-Kramer Music Company in my hometown of Decatur, IL, wherein they would have to laboriously track down said obscure works. 'Five Studies for Tuba Alone' was just such a composition. Originally written for the recently departed tubist Toby Hanks, this work is a five-part exploration of the musical and dramatic capabilities of the tuba. Learning this work helped me to really get out of my shell as a performer, and it remains one of my favorites within the solo tuba repertoire.

I met Asia Ahmetjanova in the summer of 2014, when we were both attending the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. We had a link in common through our shared acquaintance euphonist Brett Keating (a fellow alum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison), who was at the time attending the same school as Asia in Switzerland and had commissioned her for an (awesome) new work for euphonium. Asia wrote 'Aleph' for another Darmstadt attendee, Jack Adler-McKean, who is a fellow comrade in the effort to push the tuba into new and uncharted territories. I am honored to release my performance of this amazing new solo work, and sincerely hope that many, many other tubists perform it going forward.

'Breath and Sounds' is a work that I found while searching through the music library at my Master's degree school, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The composer, Beatrice Witkin, is known primarily for her early experimentation with electronics and fixed media, including the theme song for the 1970s show "Wild, Wild World of Animals." As far as I can tell, this is the earliest work for tuba and electronics composed by a woman, and I think it is a wonderful part of our solo tuba history.

Hong-Da Chin is a composer, flautist, and championship badminton player. He is also one of my very best friends--he was my Best Man, in fact, and I am proud to have known him since we entered into the Bowling Green State University DMA in Contemporary Music program in 2013. 'Berserker' is a work that I commissioned from him early on in our time at BGSU, and it remains one of my absolute favorite solo works. Like the titular figure, 'Berserker' is a visceral force of nature, and it is an important work in my development as a performer.

Like Asia Ahmetjanova, I first met Nicholas Deyoe at the 2014 Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music. We bonded over our mutual loves of beards, heavy metal, and good beer, and have since worked together on a subsequent composition that will appear in my next CD project. This work, 'Wouldn't Need You', was written for the tubist and museum curator Jonathan Piper, another fellow member of the "New Music Tuba Player" Club. We're a small club, but growing every year.

'Caverns' is a composition that I have been aware of for a long time, and I finally got the opportunity to perform it during the 2019 New Music Festival at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Originally written for the monumental tubist Ronald Bishop, this work was extra fitting for the UNK Festival due to its connection to the festival host, Anthony Donofrio--Wiley was one of his teachers, at Kent State University. It is a fantastic work that deserves to be played more, and I am honored to give it its premiere commercial release.

'breathing machine' is a work that I composed around 2014 or so, and it is one of the first compositions where I felt like I knew what I was doing. It is also one of my first experiments with hand-drawn notation--the figures on the CD and wallet design come from this work. I chose to name my label imprint Breathing Machine Records because of this work, and because I think it sums me up as a performer quite well.

Luigi Nono is a massive figure in 20th century music, and as luck would have it, the tuba plays an important role in his late works. One such work is 'Post-Prae-Ludium per Donau', and in my estimation, this is one of the most important and innovative works for the solo tuba. The original analog electronics have to be recreated for modern performances, and in this version, I use my own recreation programmed within the Pure Data platform. I have long been enamored with this work, and am thrilled to finally release my own recording of it.