My project The Grey Land recently received a Jerome Foundation grant for New Music (along with my friend Asuka Kakitani!). Right now I'm doing my J.J. Abrams The Force Awakens mystery thing, so won't be delivering too much details about the "plot" of the "opera" project just yet, but I can say that I've found my soprano: Arielle Armstrong (now Arielle Bennett). I'm really excited to work with Arielle, she has an wonderful voice and her philosophy in music meshes perfectly with the goals of The Grey Land so I'm looking forward to writing specifically for her and her voice in the next few months. Here's a profile of Arielle from a few years ago, to give a little taste of her voice and talent:

It's gonna be a beautiful project! Check back for more details on The Grey Land.

“…what with the conventions, the exhibition of candidates, the dubious state of this particular and perhaps increasingly dubious union…There is a carefully muffled pain and pain in the nation, which neither candidate, neither party, can coherently address, being, themselves, but vivid symptoms of it.”
—James Baldwin, “How One Black Man Came To Be an American: A Review of ‘Roots’.” New York Times Review of Books, September 26, 1976.
 
“I’m not black. I’m OJ.”
—OJ Simpson, Ezra Edelman. OJ: Made in America. Episode 1 (28:58). ESPN Films. 2016.

On December 1, Van Magazine published an article I wrote Flattened Multiplicities: On Musical Genre and Personal Identity. Since the article didn't have links to the source material for most of the quotes I used, I wanted to give anyone who is interested, an easy way to check them out. In order of their appearance in the article:

“judged not by the color of my skin...":
-OJ: Made in America. Episode 1 (29:17). ESPN Films. 2016.

“adamant about not being labeled ‘black’ artists..."
-Thelma Golden, Freestyle

“have always grown up listening to, enjoying, and playing all types of music: rock, funk, South Indian classical, or bluegrass, as well as art music."
-Joseph C. Phillips Jr., masters thesis, “The Music Composition Miscēre, The Historicity Of Mixed Music And New Amsterdam Records In The Contemporary New York City Mixed Music Scene.” Pages 125 & 126. 2011.

“ ‘David, this is the Civil War!..."
-Steven Thrasher, “Q&A: Philip Glass On Black Music And African-American History.” The Village Voice, February 7, 2012.

“It seems that in certain parts of our culture..."
-Jeffrey Mumford, “Who’s in the Club?” NewMusicBox, November 23, 2016. 

“for not reaching its potential don’t have any less belief that it’s possible..."
-Joseph C. Phillips Jr., “Never Has Been Yet.” The Numinosum blog, October 18, 2016.

“The canon is so overwhelmingly white and male..."
-Andrew, Norman,
"Andrew Norman Wins The Grawemeyer Award for Music." NPR, November 28, 2016.

“[Black people’s] hope is tempered by a deep awareness of how thin is the veneer of white civility..."
-Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Finding Hope in a Loveless Place.” Tressiemc blog,  November 27, 2016.
 
“You may be at the top house in Beverly Hills..."
-Rev. Cecil Murray, First AME church, quote.
Ezra Edelman. OJ: Made in America. Episode 3 (1:32:24). 2016