a suite of open-ended fantasies at the piano


In my impetuous youth i forswore the simple familiarity of Mozart,
                       Debussy, Gershwin, and Lennon/McCartney,
to take my musical tutelage with Bulgarian folk dances, Pharaoh Sanders,
Sun Ra, Ali Akbar Khan, Terry Riley, and Gamelan Semar Pegulingan.


thus entranced, i found the way to a chamber-music studio at Mills College...

i recorded these pieces with no preconceived structure or plan
(except "Marwa," whose tonal scheme is roughly based on the eponymous Indian raga).
i let the sound of the piano and the mood of a December day guide the music.

Click to see CD cover
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cover art full size

click on title to hear
a 2-minute fragment:

Windwalk 12:47
Distant Traveler 11:11
Blues 6:13
Sunwalk 8:52
Waterbirds 14:29
Marwa 7:03

no preconception:
just the inspiration of
the early winter rains and turning leaves;
sprouting mushrooms, budding moss and acorns swelling in the mud
reweaving the endless complex web of life...

this is the sound of compost, with its slow disintegration
and saturation with potential for emergent forms
singing in a jungle of wire strings and felt hammers
where dense dark sonorities find roots
in harmonic schemes large enough to encompass all the competing motifs

the sounds and moods of a quiet, complex human,
eschewing the limits of speech

even with twenty years of hindsight,
i find the outcome of this creative moment both liberating and satisfying.

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