Solo Instrument(s) and Orchestra

Earth is my contribution to the “Elements” project, a suite involving five composers which was commissioned by Joshua Bell and premiered in August 2023.

A setting of Dorianne Laux’s beautiful poem of the same name commissioned by Renée Fleming.

Triple Concerto for Two Violins, Bass and Orchestra

My Concerto for Oboe and Strings was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra for their “Prelude” concert series.

Vision was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University in honor of Aspen’s Music Director, David Zinman, on his 70th birthday.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s performance of several works by Puts over the past few years led naturally to the idea of a residency during which the composer would write a piece for the Fort Worth Symphony.

Before writing a note of my Sinfonia, I first had to decide what sort of orchestra would support the five soloists.

From a purely musical point of view, I have always focused more on melody and harmony than with rhythm.

I decided to call my new piano concerto Night after I decided to incorporate part of an earlier piece of mine called Three Nocturnes into the fabric of the tranquil second movement.

Immediately following her performance of the beautiful Oboe Concerto of Christopher Rouse at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in August 2016, I approached Katherine Needleman about doing a project together, and to my great delight she was enthusiastic.

Marimba Concerto reflects my love of Mozart’s piano concertos, works with instrumentation similar to that of this concerto, i.e. a keyboard instrument with chamber orchestra.

It seems I am always making memorials, or trying to process tragedy through my writing.

Bette and Joe Hirsch are longtime patrons of the annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California who became fans of my music when they heard my Symphony no. 2 performed at the festival in 2002.

I met the extraordinary clarinetist Bil Jackson when he premiered my Four Airs at Music from Angel Fire (New Mexico) in the summer of 2004.

“Text excerpts from the letters by Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz used and reprinted by permission of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. All rights reserved.”

Though inspired by the city of Baltimore, The City was intended as an exploration of many aspects of urban centers in America.