He began serious composition study with Robert Beadell at the University of Nebraska, where he received his Bachelors degree with a major in music education and his Master of Music degree. He continued his composition studies with Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens at the University of Southern California, where he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree with a major in composition.  While at USC, he performed in both the Wind Ensemble and the Orchestra.  It was during his studies with Dahl that he first expressed an interest in writing opera, and he was subsequently invited to study opera as a coach/conductor under the tutelage of Walter Ducloux.

In 1968, he joined the music faculty at the University of Houston, which would eventually become the Moores School of Music.  He is currently Professor of Music Theory and Composition and co-author of five widely adopted music theory books.

As a composer, he has always been interested in music for film and theater as well as for commercial and popular venues.  He was active for many years creating advertising jingles and during that time composed the scores for numerous industrial documentary films.  His most ambitious project was The Apollo File, a documentary film detailing the history of the Apollo moon missions.

His theatrical activities include a long period of collaboration with the Festival Mime Troupe of the School of Theatre at the University of Houston and its brilliant director Claude Caux.  This collaboration resulted in a significant number of works in a wide variety of musical languages and written for a diversity of ensembles.  He served fifteen seasons as musical director and composer-in-residence for the Houston Shakespeare Festival, during which time he composed original scores for nearly the entire canon of Shakespeare’s works.  He has also been commissioned to write incidental music for productions by the UH School of Theatre and Houston’s Alley Theatre.

He has written five operas, the most recent being A Room With a View, with a libretto by Buck Ross. A DVD of the recent Moores Opera Center production of this opera is available from Newport Classics.  His one-act opera Tickets, Please, with libretto by Sidney Berger, was commissioned by the Texas Opera Theatre and has been performed frequently in the United States and in England.

He has received numerous commissions from the Houston Symphony, including The Little Match Girl, for narrator and orchestra,and Rondo Concertante, the last a piece featuring the principal players of the orchestra, and written for a special educational video produced by the symphony.  Old MacDonald's Orchestra, written to introduce young people to the instruments of the orchestra, has been performed by the Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Milwaukee symphony orchestras.  Suite Joplin was recently performed by the Saint Louis Symphony. 

He has long been active as an arranger and orchestrator for the HSO, for the Moores School of Music Jazz Orchestra, and for local dance bands.  His interest in combining classical and jazz elements has found expression in many of his works, most recently Up South, written for the combined Moores School of Music Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble, and Impressions/Expressions, a jazz-based two piano piece written for Tim Hester and Ruth Tomfohrde.  A fusion of classical and popular idioms is also found in Shadows and Music, an extended song cycle for soprano, mezzo-soprano, violin, and piano.  The original text for this work was written by Buck Ross and is based on the lives and careers of Dorothy and Lillian Gish.  All three works are featured on the Albany CD entitled Shadows and Music, which also contains his arrangements of Creole songs featuring the mezzo-dramatique Débria Brown.

He has composed and arranged music for the Virtuosi of Houston, the Houston Bach Choir, the Monterey Bay Symphony, the Houston Boychoir, the HSPVA Madrigal Singers, the Bay Area Chorus, the Sons of Orpheus male chorus, the Chicago Chamber Brass, and the Paragon Brass Ensemble.  He continues as the pianist for the American Pops Orchestra.