Gakusei

学生 (“gakusei”) means “student” in Japanese.

The works on this compilation are pieces I wrote before or during college. The String Quartet is pretty much an embarrassing rip-off of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet for Strings No. 8, and the second movement is a movie soundtrack owing far too much to Samuel Barber. It’s youthful — that’s the most charitable description I can muster. I did write it before my first semester of college, so for a work by a high school graduate, it’s not a bad effort.

Palomino started out as a choral work, recasting the lyrics of Duran Duran’s “Palomino”, a track off the album Big Thing. I love Duran Duran, but I really, really hate that song. I wanted to see what would happen if I worked with something I didn’t like. Somehow, I managed to quote another Duran Duran song, “Winter Marches On.”

Three Prayers in Irish Gaelic is also meant to be a vocal work, but since I don’t know how to speak Irish, I arranged it for a cello trio instead. It’s probably the most mature work out of the bunch.

For the 2026 Anniversary Edition, “Soliloquy of a Vampire” is now included as part of this student work portfolio. “Soliloquy of a Vampire” originally started out as a piece for piano and narrator setting the Preface of Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief to music. For this version, the text has been removed and the piano part arranged for orchestra.