Serenade" for piano solo is a new NFMC 2020-2024 selection. It is dedicated to my teacher, Rebecca Shoup Willhide, who I studied with through my young years in the preparatory department at the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. Rebecca Willhide was the assistant to Olga Conus, the wife of Lev Conus who studied together with Sergei Rachmaninoff in Anton Arensky's advanced composition class at the Moscow Conservatory.
Rebecca Willhide was a brilliant music theorist and an ear-training specialist at CCM and her early training taught me structure and form in music in a very universal way at such a young and inquisitive age. As with so many relationships in life, I was guided to the one person at just the right time that would change my life in ways I could have never imagined.