As a composer, I believe that music must express ideas and emotions as well as exhibit craft; therefore, composers must be engaged with the world on multiple levels and bring to their work a knowledge of other arts as well as an awareness of global issues such as gender roles, education, justice, and the environment. In my quest to express my ideas and emotions about these issues, I often draw on extra-musical elements, such as poetry, visual images, and physical gesture, while at the same time creating functional musical shapes.

I frequently call upon performers to move through space; the position of the instrumentalist and the direction from which the sound comes are both important. The choice of instruments is an integral part of a piece, and I use timbral counterpoint and timbral shifts as formal elements. As a singer, melodic gestures are important to me, even for nontexted pieces. I often use syncopated rhythms, irregular meters, and polymeters. I draw on techniques from past eras to express my conception; my works have used isorhythms, ostinati, rotating “rows,” counterpoint, drones, extended instrumental techniques, juxtaposition, and a variety of formal “shapes.”