Boyce’s credits include the cycle for chorus and string quartet, A Garden of Roses, about which the newspaper The Spokesman Review stated, “The work is important because it is good in every way music can be good and it can provide pleasure to audiences of every age, cultural background, and level of sophistication ...” He also provided original music and the soundtrack for the PBS documentaries Harp Dreams (Emmy Award, 2011) and American Horizons: The Photography of Art Sinsabaugh, part of this exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.
His cantata, Ave Maris Stella, was premiered by Aguavá New Music Studio at the International Cervantino Festival in Mexico, and subsequently broadcast throughout Latin America.
Give that boy a grant and some Ritalin so he can spend more time composing!” Boyce was born in Santa Rosa, California, United States, and raised in Sacramento where he found his first musical training singing high school choruses and taught himself to play the piano—“Poorly,” he says, “but I got better.” He went on to earn a bachelor of music degree with a double major in voice and theory/composition (voice studies with Claudia Kitka and piano with Frank Wasko) at California State University, Sacramento, subsequent piano studies with Thomas Hulse, and later a master of music degree at the University of North Texas under the compositional guidance of Martin Mailman with a cognate in piano studying with Joseph Banowetz.
Boyce trained as a figure skater since he was 16, and skated with Holiday on Ice in Europe for a time in the early 1980s—an experience that added to his love of ballet and dance genres.
Boyce’s education was assisted by scholarships and teaching fellowships while he worked steadily as a church and synagogue musician, a practice that shaped his understanding of choral genres.