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He has earned graduate degrees from Eastman School of Music and built a career on writing classical music that's been performed in universities and concert halls across the country. But his talents don't end in academia. Recently, the 47-year-old returned to composing music more reflective of his roots.

"I originally got into music as a rock musician," he said. "I didn't really even discover classical music until I was a teenager."

Over the past three years, Barsom wrote a collection of rock songs that he intends to continually refine, hoping to build a presence in the popular music community. In April, he performed his first two solo gigs at Webster's Cafe and The State Theatre in State College.

"[Writing rock music is] something I've wanted to do since the beginning. But just trying to have a career as a concert music composer, and the university job, and raising a family; I just didn't feel like I had the time to invest in it to really do it," he said. "So fortunately this thing called a sabbatical came along in 2006 and one of the things I did during that time was to write a bunch of songs."

He said becoming a career academic was simply the most feasible way to make a living using his musical penchant without having to "live out of van and bum off my girlfriend."

"[Having an academic career] seemed to have an end game," he said. "The whole thing about being in a band is that you’re at the mercy of circumstances."

Barsom donated the proceeds from his performance at Webster's to the Centre County Women's Resource center, a not-for-profit organization that assists women in abusive relationships.

He performed at the State Theatre as part of the "Rock Out for Reading" benefit, a concert Penn State students organized to raise money for adult literacy programs.

"I'm probably going to be doing benefit things for qute awhile, just to create opportunities to play," he said, adding he will contiue performing for free until he feels he's "good enough at it to charge money."

While music is his foremost passion, Barsom said he loves working with students. As a teacher, Barsom enjoys helping students grow as musicians and achieve the goals they set for themselves.

"Just having lessons with students, telling them things they didn’t know, and knowing I at least made it possible for them to take a step in a direction they had said the wanted to go, is really satisfying," he said.

Drawing influence and inspiration from "thousands" of sources from the farthest reaches of the music universe, Barsom describes his particular style as "progressive rock masquerading as indie-pop."

"It's hard for me to say what influenced me," he said. "In any one song the influences can include anything from Balinese Gamelan to Tchaikovsky to the Sex Pistols."

This array of musical influences often surfaces as a single note or passage, which may in no way resembles its creative source, he said.

"There’s one little moment in one song where it's just two chords played with a slide that comes from an Aaron Copland ballet," he said. "I know it’s not the same note. It’s not the same music. It's a gesture and the intent of the whole thing is right out of 'Rodeo.'"

His music has an undeniable pop sensibility with all the sophistication and complexity one would expect of a tenured music professor.

"It's really kind of accessible. It's consonant. It's got melodies. It's friendly stuff," he said of his music. "But it also tends to be complicated in the sense things don't repeat; there’s not a lot of repetition in these songs.  They tend to be through-composed."

When playing live, Barsom uses a looping machine to preserve his music's intricacy.

"There's an attempt to incorporate as much of a multi-part recording as I can," he said. "But some of it I can’t do live because there’s so many parts, too many harmonies."

He considers this project part of an "inevitable cycle." His creative output has come full circle, revolving back to where it began.

"I think I'm at heart just a rock musician," he said. "But I happen to be also good enough at doing classical music to somehow manage to make some kind of a profession out of it."

Rock vs. Classical

Paul's endeavor may seem like a master chef servingRamen noodels, but that's not how he sees it. To Barsom, rock and classical music have a lot in common.

More work by the author

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