Back in 1974, at Oberlin College, Herbert Blau led a group of students in developing a production about the ill-fated Donner Party. The cast was a promising one, including Bill Irwin and Michael O’Connor, with whom I toured for years in The Regard of Flight. I was a composition student at the time, and contributed […]

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The slide whistle and the trombone seem made for each other. This duet shows off both of them, in four movements of 33 measures each.

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This spirited duet pairs the garklein recorder, the smallest member of the recorder family, with the tuba. The two contrasting sonorities are combined in unison, in harmony, in antiphony, and in canon, mostly in C major, before ending their tenuous alliance.  

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The notes do-mi-si-la-do-ré spell domicile adoré, a phrase often cited in real estate ads and framed in happy homes. This is a little canon on the theme.

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Here, from Bedside Nonsense (see the last post), is the beginning of a story about Deucalion, the Greek equivalent of the Jewish Noah. He had to contend with all those hybrids, and it wasn’t easy. DEUCALION’S ARK Deucalion had different problems than Noah’s, since he had to stock his ark in the Greek mythopoetic part […]

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A sleepy piece for viola and piano. Here’s the first page…

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Here’s a little catalogue of what I showed at the Mothership: 1. ????: Non-narrative detective action, from my book The Unknown Adjective. 2. ALPHONSE ALLAIS MOCKS THE SPIRIT OF SCHOPENHAUER: The frontispiece for my translation of Allais’s book Long Live Life! 3. ASTERISKS: Chat Noir endnotes, for Double Over, another Allais translation. 4. BACK YARD: […]

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There will be a show of my artwork at the Mothership, the multi-purpose space in Woodstock run by Paul McMahon. It will be small but lively: cartoons, illustrations, travel sketches, scores, index card assemblages, rubber stamp stereoscopy, broadsides, and other works on paper. And it will be up for only a few days: the opening […]

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I have three (you can count them) pages of comics in the first issue of Dagger magazine. My contributions are “Cupid” and “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Skinner”; the magazine is a glossy production, too big for my scanner, edited by Don Jolly and Matt James. More info here.

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The Doug Skinner Songbook is now available! This elegant oversized paperback contains 46 of my songs, including such favorites as “Buenas Noches, Little Roaches,” “Love Me Unconditionally,” “My Pal Satan,” and “Bloated Plutocrats on Parade”! They’re “chillingly zany” (New York Times); they’re “scathingly witty… lullabies etched in acid” (Metro Magazine), and now you can add […]

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