Yearbook.

On January 1, 2018, I sat down on my couch and decided to compose a tune. It was not something I had done often—I might have written five or six tunes over the course of the previous two decades. But seeing how easily that tune “fell out”, I decided to challenge myself. It was New Year’s Day, and I hadn’t made any resolutions. So, not thinking I’d stick with it, I casually decided that I would write one tune every day for the entire year. Surprising no one more than myself, I actually did. What started out as a writing exercise has now become a multi-year, multi-pronged project .

Of the 365* tunes written, almost 190 of them have found their way into a tunebook, available for purchase on this website. Nearly 40 of them were recorded “traditionally” on a double album featuring fiddlers Colin Grant, Chrissy Crowley and Dara Smith-MacDonald, guitar players Brent Chaisson, Jason MacDonald and Jason Murdock, and me on piano. That’s the second disc. The first disc in the collection is a “non-traditional” version of some of these same tunes, but arranged in unexpected ways. There is one piece arranged for local quintet Belkolora. There are two pieces featuring the Musiversal Orchestra recorded in Prague, Czechia. There are doo-wop, disco, New Orleans jazz, and Scots trad influenced arrangements. There’s even one that sounds like it came straight out of an ‘80s video game. It features some of the same musicians as the traditional album, plus a whole slew of others I’ve always wanted to work with.

The album and tunebook are both now available for purchase over on the “Shop” page. They can be purchased separately or as part of a package. To view and download some of the tunes available in the book and on the album, check out the Sheet Music page.

*More than 365 tunes were written. It really should have been “at least one tune per day”.