Awards

Awards & Accolades

2022

Winner, Jazz Journalists Association Award for Biography/Autobiography of the Year (Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul)

Second place winner, Association of Catholic Publishers’ “Excellence in Publishing” Award in Biography (Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul)

New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship (“Catholic Parishes and Jazz Composers in the 1960s: The Harlem Vicariate, Eddie Bonnemere, and Mary Lou Williams”)

2021

Theodore Mother Guerin Research Travel Grant (University of Notre Dame) for “Writing Friendships: Letter Correspondence Between Jazz Pianist Mary Lou Williams and Women Religious, 1961–1981”

SATB modern justice anthem, “We Walk in Love,” is selected as the sole composition to celebrate Music in Our Schools Month by the 15,000 teacher member Pennsylvania State Education Association, Mideastern Region, for a 32-voice virtual choir comprised of students from ten high schools.

2020

Second place winner, National Sacred Music Choral Composition Contest, Dallas, TX, for “Make My Joy Complete”

2018

New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Grant for the Nossa Senhora Suite

Composition Fellow at the Choral Art Initiative PREMIERE|Project Festival
(Premiere of SATB piece, “Oração da Viajante (The Traveler’s Prayer)”

2017

Sacatar Institute Fellowship, Bahia, Brazil (2018 eight week residency)

Winner, ChoralArt New England Carol Contest (SATB a cappella piece, “A Christmas Carol”)

Winner of the Colorado Chorale commissioning contest (2018 premiere of “After a Storm”)

Winner of the Annual Hymn Search of The Hymn Society in the US and Canada
(“We Belong to God”)

Justice Choir call for scores: SATB song, “We Walk in Love,” is selected for the Justice  Choir Songbook, Vol. 1

St. Peter Episcopal Church, Ashtabula, OH (SA commission, “Who Do You Say?”)

2016

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fiscal sponsorship for new Afro-Brazilian project, the Nossa Senhora Suite

Best Pianist, Hothouse New York Fans Decision Jazz Award

Winner, Illinois-ACDA Composition Contest (for SSAA piece, “Where Shadow Chases Light”)

MusicSpoke: Selected as a MusicSpoke affiliated composer

Lutheran Arts’ Martin Luther Hymn Prize recipient (new hymn and anthem commission)

2015

Composer-Librettist Studio at New Dramatists, New York
One of five composers selected for the annual music-theatre workshop

Winner, The Astoria Choir Call for Scores (for SSAATTB piece, “Glistening Lily”)

Berger-Carter Research Fund grant recipient, Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, NJ Research on jazz in Catholicism in the late 1960s/early 1970s

2013

Semifinalist, The American Prize in Choral Composition (for “Glistening Lily”)

2011

Finalist for a Fulbright research/teaching award in São Paulo, Brazil

2002

Winner of the Great American Jazz Piano Competition, Jacksonville, FL

Composing- Selected Commissions

2013-15: Park Avenue Christian Church, New York
Over fifteen original works for Sanctuary Choir, Gospel Choir, and congregation

2010: United Methodist Women’s Assembly, St. Louis, MO (theme song for 6000 attendees)

2004: Concentus Women’s Choir, Rochester, NY (SSAA commission, ‘I learned that her name was Proverb’)