From the Concert Hall to the Living Room: Why I Am Changing How I Compose

For most of my adult life, I have been a composer of contemporary classical music: the kind performed in concert halls and at new music festivals, often supported by institutions and judged by panels. It’s a world I once found deeply stimulating: intellectually rigorous, aesthetically adventurous, and grounded in traditions I loved.

But it’s also a world that has changed.

When I began composing professionally in the late 1990s, artistic merit—however contested or subjective—was the currency of the realm. After a long and painful hiatus due to a psychotic break, I returned to the scene in 2017 and found it radically transformed. Identity categories now shaped programming priorities. Demographic representation had become an institutional imperative. The language of the arts was no longer simply about sound, expression, or form; it was about optics, equity, and visibility.

It’s not that I oppose inclusion or historical redress. But I found myself in a system where aesthetic judgment had been eclipsed by ideological signalling. Where curators seemed more fearful than bold. And where composers—especially those not fitting the ‘right’ demographic profile—were increasingly sidelined, not because of their music, but in spite of it.

Gradually, I came to a decision that felt both difficult and liberating: I would step back. I would no longer hawk my scores around or bend my creative impulses to fit a cultural agenda. I would still write music, still enter the occasional call for scores, still cherish the chance to hear my work performed in concert: but I would no longer try to make a career out of it. That, to me, began to feel like flogging a dead horse.

Instead, I would do something both smaller and larger—I would return to the roots of why I compose in the first place.

That’s how Your Special Song was born.

It’s a simple idea. You tell me about someone you love—your partner, your parent, your best friend—and I transform that story into a bespoke, professionally recorded song. A wedding gift, an anniversary surprise, a tribute, a legacy. These songs are not written for funding panels or critics. They’re written for the people who matter to you, and for the moments that matter most.

To some in the contemporary music world, this might seem like a retreat. But to me, it feels like a return. A return to music as connection rather than abstraction. As gift rather than commodity. As human expression rather than cultural signalling.

I write songs with the same craft and care I have brought to concert works: my first was to Michelle, my fiancée. But now, the audience isn’t a jury or a board; it’s a couple exchanging vows, or a parent honouring their child, or a family remembering someone they’ve lost. And in those spaces, the emotional stakes are higher, not lower. The music means more.

In September 2025, I’m relocating to Arizona to marry Michelle. With that move comes a fresh start: a new country, a new focus, and a new kind of composing—one rooted in connection, not careerism.

Your Special Song is not just a business. It’s a philosophy. It’s a kind of quiet resistance. A belief that meaning matters more than metrics. That beauty and depth don’t need institutional validation. That a song, made with care and love, can carry more truth than a season’s worth of concert programming.

So yes, I’ve walked away from the compositional career ladder. But I haven’t walked away from music. I’ve just changed the room in which it, to my mind, truly lives.