NOTE: Currently, I’m accepting commissions with delivery dates in 2027 and 2028. This availability may fluctuate over time (and I sometimes forget to update this note).

I accept commissions for performers and ensembles of all skill levels. My rates typically vary by duration, instrumentation, deadline, and use—a thirty-minute multi-movement commission for orchestra is more labor-intensive than a two-minute piece for two performers. That said, I enjoy working with students, ensembles, directors, philanthropists (if that’s your thing), and educators, and I’m happy to explore options if you’re on a limited budget. To submit an inquiry and begin the commission process, please send me an email (using the email address on my Contact page) including, at bare minimum, your desired instrumentation, duration, delivery date, and a rough estimate of your budget. Once I get your email, I’ll be in touch via email to send you my commissioner questionnaire and schedule a call to discuss your needs and desires in more depth.

Please note that due to demand and my own creative schedule, I may (but do not always) require a six-month minimum period in which to create your piece. This varies from project to project, but I encourage you to reach out with as much advance notice as possible so we have the most flexibility as I craft you something cool.

A sampling of works performers and directors have commissioned me for:

• body, mind, and heart for flugelhorn and fixed media with optional live narrator, commissioned by Brianne Borden.
• The End of the World (I’m Not Dying) for grade 4 wind ensemble and narrator, commissioned by Gretchen Renshaw James.
• see me for tuba and fixed media, commissioned by Steph Frye-Clark.
• whispers i & ii for trumpet and optional fixed media, commissioned by Connor Johnson.
• Pushing Back for trumpet, bass clarinet, and fixed media, commissioned by Spark Duo.
• Helios for trumpet and fixed media, commissioned by Alex Wilson.
• LETTING GO (off the cliff) for trombone with optional electronics, commissioned by John Pisaro.
• walking/I’m sorry, Mom for two narrators and moving a cappella choir, commissioned by Tanner Pfeiffer.
• silhouettes for trumpet, trombone, and piano, commissioned by Willis Dotson and Jared Jarvis.
• Your Mouse God is Dead for two narrators with optional amplification, commissioned by Ian Stahl and John Pisaro.
• Red Light Horizon for big band, commissioned by Santa Teresa High School Jazz Band I.

Want to team up with other performers or ensembles and create a new piece at lower individual cost? Check out my consortium information here. If you’re invested in a solo commission but on a tighter budget than you’d like, check out the discounts I’m offering over on my Patreon.

If you’re new to commissioning (or new to commissioning me), please keep reading to learn more about my commission process. The rest of this page is very close to an FAQ, but I’ve presented it in this way to point you toward important ideas that tend to make for successful, mutually fulfilling collaborations. If you don’t have the time to digest my long sentences, I recommend making sure you read the stuff in bold.

Quick table of contents:
1. What is on the commissioner questionnaire? 2. What should I prepare for the initial commission meeting? (This section is long.) 3. What if I want/need to convert my planned commission into a consortium? 4. Will I have to sign a contract? 5. How does the payment schedule work? 6. Are revisions allowed? 7. My world premiere was delayed or canceled. What do I do?

What is on the commissioner questionnaire?

I use my commissioner questionnaire to get more detail about some of the things we’re less likely to talk about in depth during our initial meeting (plus a couple things I will definitely ask you about). This is partially to get you thinking in depth about your goals for our collaboration and partly to offer you time to consider what you may or may not want to share with me about things like you/your ensemble’s kinesthetic limitations. If you’re not comfortable answering a question in writing, feel free to leave it blank or write “N/A.” But please return it to me once you’ve completed it!

What should I prepare for the initial commission meeting?

You can come with as much or as little direction as you’d like, but even if you aren’t entirely sure what you want (or know you want to give me a lot of creative freedom), I recommend considering the following questions:

Do you have specific ideas about the kind of subject matter you’d like to tackle together?

Sometimes I’m given free rein on this, and that can be fun! But in a true commission (with no other funders), your wants and needs are a critical part of all our negotiations. I am happy to listen to all the ideas you may have about subject matter and work together to find a path forward that you’re excited about. Something I recommend all commissioners ask themselves is: if I take the subject matter in a different direction than you were expecting, will you be unhappy? (As an example, if you give me a prompt like “a piece about death” expecting a funeral-vibes piece and I instead write an angry work about necropolitics, you might be a little taken aback.) If there are topics within your area of interest that you DON’T want to explore (for any reason), that’s really important for me to know!

You may also realize you have more nuanced ideas about our identified subject matter partway through the commission. If this happens, please let me know ASAP. I might be able to reframe or revise what I have already written to better suit your refined concept! And although it may feel awkward or scary to bring this up, I’d ALWAYS much rather have that conversation during the writing process than have the sneaking feeling you’re not really happy with the piece after I turn it in.

One example of a commission that had a very successful mid-process pivot is Afterlives, which I wrote in 2025 for trumpeter Louie Eckhardt. Our original concept had been a very general look at grief, but during the year-plus between our initial meeting and final delivery, we substantially changed course and decided to explore how any kind of rebuilding after a deep loss is inherently informed by that loss. We also chose to dedicate the work in honor of his late mother. That choice—and Louie’s open, proactive communication with me about his artistic goals for the piece—took our collaboration from solid to amazing. I came out of the experience having grown as an artist, Louie came out of it with a custom-tailored piece that he loved so much it is the title track of his forthcoming album, and we both found a great new friend in each other!

What instrumentation and duration are you looking for?

You can come in with an exact instrumentation and a pretty tight duration (usually my final ranges are about 2 minutes different), or you can come in with a general idea: like “[solo instrument] with accompaniment” or “less than 10 minutes.”

Are there notation styles, techniques, accessories, or actions you’d like to avoid?

This helps me narrow my focus and craft a piece that works for all of you—your brain, your body, and your resources. (And on the flip side, if you have any specific things you want to make sure we include, let me know that too!)

Are there specific sonic qualities you’d like to include?

If you have strong feelings about what you want, being specific about types of sound (timbre, feel, fast/slow, etc.) helps me immensely.

Some people come to me for a commission and tell me they like a specific work in my existing catalog, but I want to issue a word of caution. I am not a mind reader, and I cannot intuit the exact things you may enjoy about my existing work unless you tell me what they are—and what you’d like to include in our collaboration. For example, many commissioners since 2022 have used go to the garden as their point of comparison. However, there are many choices I made in that work that a performer might be drawn to: the scaling difficulty, the range constraints of each version, the ossia options, the field recordings I used in the fixed media, the colors of noise I used in the fixed media, the presence of drones throughout much of the piece, the use of narration to guide listeners through a story, the text of the narration itself, the pitch centers it uses, the choice of mute, the ratio of lyrical to technical passages, the jury-friendly length, any of the specific extended techniques I incorporated, etc.

Throughout my composing life so far, I have found that attempting to make lightning strike twice in the same way is not a challenge I particularly enjoy—nor do I think it results in my best work. While I do revisit major concepts again and again in my writing, the differences in framing, orchestration, and my personal composing goals are what make those compelling and fruitful endeavors. As such, I usually do not accept projects that I feel are just requesting that I write another version of something I’ve already composed. But there are exceptions to pretty much everything, so please don’t feel deterred from pitching me your idea—if I’m not the right person for the job, I may be able to refer you to another composer who is!

Where and when do you plan to perform/present this piece?

I do write performance clauses into my contracts—when you commission me, part of what I get from you is a performance of the work, and a recording of that performance (or a good rehearsal run) so I can market the piece after exclusivity. I write this into my contracts. If you have no active plans to perform the work, and/or if you plan to make a commercial recording, those are important things to tell me in our initial meeting. If you already have concrete plans to perform the work multiple times during exclusivity, please let me know that too!

Beyond this, though, site-specific details for your world premiere performance are also valuable information. For instance, I would consider different parameters for an instrumentalist playing outdoors versus in a tiled organ hall, or a speaker/singer with an ensemble sans amplification versus with a microphone.

(If you are planning to professionally record your commissioned work, just bear in mind that when we get to that point, we will also negotiate a recording licensing fee. This happens after the commission process is complete but before you record the work. Feel free to ask me for a ballpark number in our commission meeting, so you can plan accordingly and adjust your commission budget if necessary!)

When do you want to receive the finished work to begin practicing/rehearsals?

If it’s helpful to you, I sometimes break this into two dates: an ideal, in-a-perfect-world receipt date, and an “I need this no later than” date. Often we can find some due date between the two, and whenever possible, I’ll give you that ideal deadline. But for pieces with a tight turnaround time or that I’m working into my schedule between existing commitments, earlier delivery dates aren’t always possible.

How long would you like exclusivity?

The exclusivity period following delivery is the time period where you are the only performer (or, on rare occasion, the only performer besides me) with permission to perform the finished work. Typically, my exclusivity periods max out at a year after delivery, but I am always willing to discuss the particulars of your situation and determine if an exception might be warranted. But I also have commissioners who waive their exclusivity period entirely, allowing me to immediately make the work commercially available. You can request any length of exclusivity you’d like, and we’ll figure out what works best together.

What is your budget?

This can easily be a nerve-wracking question, but I don’t want to make it stressful! To this day, I work with performers with a wide variety of budgets. I try to have the most budgeting flexibility with students, early-career musicians, and performers coming back from time away from their instrument (for any reason, including injury, pregnancy, mental health, disability flares/reduced baseline, job loss, time working in another field, etc). This flexibility is made possible in part by performers with access to more funds, who can pay me my full rate on other projects and allow me to devote time to our peers and colleagues with less access. If you have (or might have) access to institutional funding—whether you are a student or an employee of an institution—that is a great thing to bring up in our initial meeting. Some schools have grant funding for students to enact special projects, so if you are studying music and our collaboration will be used on a recital or as part of another major school milestone, it is worth looking into!

If you are working with a limited budget (especially less than ~$400), we will work together to figure out what I can offer that will best fit your wants and needs. Most commonly, this can involve lowering the duration of a piece. I am not opposed to writing extremely short pieces (or open-duration pieces that I can craft a text score for), but in all cases I try to keep the rough structure of the work as close to your specifications as possible.

Is this piece going to be presented as part of a particular project?

This can be a practical matter, like “it’s going [on my senior recital/in my tenure file/etc.],” or an artistic one, like “I’m building an hour-long concert about the plight of bees.” Or both! But “no” is okay, too.

What if I want/need to convert my planned commission to a consortium?

Sometimes, performers who originally planned for a standalone commission decide (for any number of reasons) to convert the project into a consortium. If you are interested in converting a planned commission with me into a consortium, please read this carefully. Because I specifically target consortia that are going to appeal to a wide audience, not every commission proposal is appropriate for a consortium. I do my best work on consortium projects when I am not at all worried about whether or not we are going to meet our minimum sign-ups, so consider the performers in your network and how you might present the project in a way they are excited to sign on to. If we can’t identify enough (paying) performers to fill the consortium, it will be difficult to greenlight the project!

Another important thing I encourage folks to consider when converting a commission to a consortium is price point. It is important to me that we keep buy-ins as low as possible while still putting us in a good position to meet my minimum rate for the work. I do not enjoy the idea of charging $100+ per performer member for a solo or small chamber work, and if your anticipated number of interested performers would require a significant investment from each one, I may turn down the project. This can be addressed a number of ways: you as the consortium lead can commit to paying a portion of my rate that’s large enough to keep other buy-ins low, you can obtain grant funding to cover a portion of the fee, etc.

While the shared vision we have developed in the original commission process will remain a cornerstone of the project, there are a number of different logistical and practical considerations I have to account for when writing a piece that will immediately be distributed to a large group of performers with different skills and limitations. I will do my best to honor as many of your preferences as possible, but due to the nature of their making, I cannot write consortium works that are guaranteed to be specifically tailored to a single performer.

For more information on my consortium processes, please visit my Consortium Information page.

Will I have to sign a contract?

Yes. I contract all my funded works, including both commissions and consortia. The contract is the document that governs our collaboration and ensures we’re both clear on timelines and parameters. While our surrounding conversations shape the contract, and I do my best to ensure that it accurately reflects what we’ve discussed and negotiated, I encourage you to read it carefully before signing and let me know if anything needs to be changed, added, removed, or negotiated further! Ultimately, the contract reflects our shared understanding of what the final work should be based on, and in the event we have questions or misaligned expectations further down the road, we will go back to the contract and use it as our guide.

How does the payment schedule work?

I have a general process that I tailor to each commissioner depending on what suits their specific situation. Typically, I ask for a percentage of the total fee up front (once the contract is signed) as a nonrefundable retainer—this can be as high as 50% but is frequently lower (especially for students and folks with limited budgets more broadly). This percentage is something we negotiate together, to find what works best for you and the particulars of our project. For higher-risk projects, like pieces that will be very labor-intensive on my part but may not yield many performances due to instrumentation or some other core parameter, the percentage is generally closer to 50%. However, you will not offend me by asking for a percentage or payment timeline that works for you.

The rest of the commission fee is due upon delivery of the work (usually within 30 days, though that’s negotiable, too). In all cases, I do not permit performances of the work until the commission fee is received in full. (The exclusivity period does not extend when payments are late.)

I do write a late fee into my contracts for payments not made by the deadlines we’ve negotiated together, so please be upfront with me about what payment timelines will be most workable for you!

Are revisions allowed?

If a commissioner is requesting revisions, I try to be as accommodating as I can. I urgently prioritize revising any passages that would cause you pain or force you to push yourself too hard due to technical or kinesthetic demands, either by completely altering the passage or providing multiple options so all future performers can pick what works best for them. I also will find workarounds if I’ve inadvertently written something impossible. Textual clarifications (things like adding dynamics or articulations to make intentions obvious, or altering/adding to performance notes to more completely explain something) are also often completely workable.

However, some revision requests would require functionally re-composing the piece, which drastically expands the scope of my work past what we negotiated in our contract. My composing is very motivically-informed, and when a small handful of ideas develop into an entire work, a request that may seem simple (like “can you add a section that [does something substantially different than existing material]”) is not a revision; it is a recomposition request. While I may accommodate these as time allows (as long as the envisioned change still fits within the larger structures I’ve created), I am not always able to.

I also do not allow vetoes of entire movements or works. If we are finding that’s a problem, this tells me the concepts we contracted on were not accurate understandings of what the piece should be. Depending on timeline, re-negotiation may be possible. If it’s not, and we can’t find another way forward, I will cancel the project. (If you’re the anxious type like I am, please know that I share this so you can make informed decisions, not because I think it will occur during our collaboration. I have written well north of 60 works that have been publicly performed, most of which have been commissioned or otherwise written for a specific performer, and this has been something I’ve had to grapple with approximately twice.)

My world premiere performance was delayed or canceled. What do I do?

This is something I’ve successfully navigated with performers more times than I can count, especially in and around 2020! If you have to reschedule a planned performance and the new date is or may be outside the exclusivity window, please just drop me a line and let me know. From there, we will work together to assess if we need to modify any timelines. I have only extended exclusivity a couple of times in my career, but in truly extraordinary circumstances, I will absolutely consider it.

And if you end up having to cancel the world premiere outright due to injury or circumstances forcing you to take a break from your musical practice, I understand. Should this occur during exclusivity, I will ask for your input on whether you would like to keep the exclusivity period as we negotiated it or make the work immediately publicly available. Anyone having to deal with this is going to be having a hard time, and I don’t want to make that harder, so we’ll work together to figure out what comes next for the piece.