In March of 2022 I spent a few days in Northeast Ohio at Hiram College where I hosted a composition forum with composition and theory students, rehearsed the Wind Ensemble as well as the Pep Band. Dr. Mike Waddell heads the department and leads the Bands, the wind ensemble performed my piece 'Hung Aloft the Night' and the Pep Band performed several of the arrangements I had done for them over the last 2 years as well as the fight song they commission back in 2019. We also had an open lecture period with the students and faculty where we discussed topics of music and my life as a composer. On a personal note, being a huge history buff I always knew of Hiram College (which was mildly shocking to the students and faculty there) because of my obsession with all things James Garfield. If you don't know much about our 20th president he's definitely worth reading about. But he attended Hiram back when it was Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. He was the last 'log cabin president' and his mother gave him her life savings (14 dollars) to attend the university for a semester, he was by no exaggeration a rare kind of genius and after only a few terms at the university became a professor of philosophy, mathematics, languages and theology. He was a dark horse candidate that sadly was assassinated before he could really have an impact on the country. Below I've uploaded a picture of the Garfield Statue on the Hiram Campus.
