"Serenada Schizophrana is a completely new experience for me. As a film composer, I've always had visuals to drive my orchestral music. Serenada began as a commission from the American Composers Orchestra to be performed at Carnegie Hall. Having never done anything like this before, beginning was quite daunting. I began composing several dozen short improvisational compositions, none of them related. Slowly, some of them began to develop themselves until I had six separate movements that, in some abstract, absurd way, felt connected. Free from film restrictions, I more or less let each movement take itself wherever it wanted to go in a kind of musical stream of consciousness (which, with the way my brain works, was not a very smooth stream). The piece, conducted by Steven Sloane, was performed in New York in February 2005. It was a thrilling experience for me, as I've never heard any orchestral music I've written performed live on stage, not to mention on a stage of such significance.

Many of my orchestral musical influences come from mid-20th century film composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner and Erich Korngold to name a few (this list is long). In terms of classical music, I was hugely influenced by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Orff and Bartok, but early Duke Ellington also had a major role.

I consider myself to be a musical throwback. With the exception of a few more recent influences like Harry Partch, Philip Glass and Lou Harrison, I am forever attached to the music of the early 20th century when, for me, orchestral music flourished alongside the creation of jazz in a unique and remarkable way. I suppose this piece mixes up all my influences in a kind of musical "gumbo." I hope it's interesting and perhaps even entertaining."