Child’s Play

I wrote “Child’s Play” for two friends, saxophonist Michael Bovenzi and clarinetist Guy Yehuda. My duo explores the sound and manner of both wind instruments. This musical suite is an homage to that best part of childhood: playtime. In my experience that was when creativity was always encouraged and nurtured. The four movements of “Child’s Play” are each inspired by different aspects of play.

The first movement, “The Game”, deals with the concepts of winning and losing, difficult lessons. The music consists of game episodes followed by the subsequent emotional reactions.

The second movement, “Watching Clouds”, is very slow and passive. Yet it is intense in its way. Many children are capable of finding a powerful focus when cloud watching or daydreaming. This is a process that follows it’s own rules. Here my cloud music appears, morphs, fades, etc. It is purposeful, yet mysterious.

   “Funny Faces”, the third movement, celebrates silliness and childhood hijinks. The players are asked to stretch the sonic capabilities of their instruments, to create strange, grotesque sounds, and to break the tension occasionally with musical laughter. Surely there is nothing more life affirming than children’s laughter.

   The fourth movement, “Runnin’ Around”, is self-explanatory. This is brilliant running music. For a child it is just fun to move and it is exhilarating to go fast, particularly in a young body.

Piano Sonata No. 1

Completed in 2005, this large, four-movement work was written over the course of almost five years. This sonata is pluralistic in nature, as it utilizes several disparate styles as source material. My goal was to pay homage to the musical traditions I love, to find a unity in diversity.

The sonata opens with Kimnara’s Blessing, which combines elements of Balinese gamelan music with elements of the Western European 19th century romantic tradition. The movement is set in a free sonata-allegro form. Kimnara is one of several musical gods in the Hindu-Buddhist canon. It was after seeing an ancient wooden statue of Kimnara in Japan that I was inspired to write this work.

Moonspinner is named after a handcrafted wooden toy I saw once in North Carolina. This scherzo like movement celebrates American folk music. A brilliant abstract fiddle music alternates with an original “folk tune” to create a simple rondo format.

The third movement, Turtle Dreams of Flight, explores the far extremes of tempo and range available in musical expression. Here very slow, low music gradually transcends to very fast, high music and back again, with some odd dream-like episodes along the way.

The work closes with Chez Garuda, a musical portrait of the imposing Hindu bird-man- god. This jazz-influenced movement is set in sonata-allegro form. Possessed by a passionate urgency, my Garuda music alights to rest only a couple of times, otherwise it whirls with a fierce activity that spins to the final climax.

In this recording pianist Yukino Miyake performs my sonata with a wonderful musicality and brilliant virtuosity.

Cut A Rug - (2019) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano

“This one movement fantasy is dance music. More specifically, it is an homage to 1920’s American dance music. The piece works well as a concert music, but I think a choreographer might find it fun to work with. “Cut a Rug” is energetic, dramatic and abstract, often toying with the motive of an alternating third. But there’s more than that. I found four pop tunes from the 1920’s which feature that alternating third interval and incorporated these tunes into the mix. You might listen for “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” 1925, “My Buddy” 1922, “Coquette” 1928 and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye!” 1922 - all great tunes from the “Great American Songbook.” This brings into play both old fashioned lyricism and a bit of comedy. This is carefully crafted ensemble music, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, oddly unique: seriously wacky. I think it’s safe to say that it’s quite essentially American.”

Street Music

"Street Music is a duo for violin and cello, commissioned by my friend, violinist Piotr Szewczyk. This is American music, a bluesy toccata, a relentless driving statement of layered riff patterns. My street musicians are not just entertaining passersby. They are shouting out and dancing with a manic exuberant energy for the sheer fun of it.”

Fantasies on African American Songs

“I have always been interested in mixing cultural aesthetics and styles. In these three movements I combine different materials, styles and developmental methods, mixing traditions freely, attempting to create a specifically American new music. Swing Low is a well known spiritual, Black Woman a women's prison song and Shortening Bread a beloved southern children's son. This recording was made by the Altius String Quartet in 2019.”

Persimmon

“Persimmon was written in Nishinomiya, Japan in 1992 while I was teaching at Kobe College. The influence of Japanese traditional music on this piece is, I think, very apparent. At times the violin invokes the spirit of the “shamisen” and the piano the “koto”. Most important, the clarinet is asked to become, especially in the lingering coda, a player of that almost metaphysical Japanese instrument, the “shakuhachi”. Takahashi Atoda’s wonderful story “The Square Persimmon” served as an inspiration for my work. Atoda’s “Persimmon” is nostalgic and autumnal, and features a ghostly mix of things modern and ancient.”

Ondine

"Ondine" is one of the twenty-four piano Preludes by Claude Debussy. I have played the entire set many times as a concert program. I think this is my favorite. This is Debussy at his most abstract, yet the piece is so beautifully colorful and evocative of the magical water sprite, "Ondine", it never fails to enchant an audience."

Op. 39 Etude-Tableaux

“The Op. 39 Etude-Tableaux are perhaps Rachmaninoff's most "orchestral" music for solo piano. Number five in Eb minor is a grand tragic aria, overflowing with passionate melody. The writing is so idiomatic, so effective. It is an exquisite piece."

Four American Painters

Improvisation is basic music making. We should remember that many of the great composers were fine improvisers: Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, etc). Improvisation is inexorably linked to composition. Improvisation is in essence instant composition; composition is in essence carefully considered, carefully edited improvisation.

Improvisation flourishes in that area where intuition and intellect work together as equals. The intellect must “let go”, but only so much. The intuition seems to work best when supported by trust and enthusiasm, and particularly, on the support of the intellect. In free improvisation, one finds a psychological place and then begins to play. One gesture leads to another, pattern follows pattern and the controlling ego finds itself watching the fingers make music.

The music is created by the memory, aural or physical, of everything one has ever heard or imagined, but also by the layout of the keyboard, the shape of the hand and the hand’s natural choreography as it dances on the keys. The process feels rather like magic. But it is all quite natural. This is how the mind works best: open, attentive, in the moment, creating.

My musical portraits of four great American abstract expressionist painters refer to the artists’ works. In DeKooning I layer up swirls of interrelated material. In Rothko the music floats in placing emitting musical light. Pollock splatters a crazed frenzy of notes all over the keyboard. In her work Ms. Frankenthaler creates a mysterious beauty out of a spacious mixture of gestures and “objects”. I attempt to do the same. With these musical improvisations I offer my homage.

Christmas Music

“Perhaps this recording demands some patience, but give it a chance. Here I improvise with two radios freely, trying to incorporate whatever may appear into a coherent musical-dramatic fabric. Listen to the whole segment, carefully. It makes a kind of sense. It is serious and funny at the same time. In fact I think it is eerily transcendent. It asks the question, "What is music, anyway?”

Penny Lane

"This is a free wheeling improv on the McCartney classic, "Penny Lane". Is there any happier, more exuberant tune? I think my enthusiasm is obvious here."

Two Flowers Rag

"Two Flowers Rag is a lyrical, even sentimental evocation of that period before WWI, when pop music was actually "light classical" music. But of course, ragtime is syncopated. This piece is then a happy mix of both. This rag is dedicated to my two daughters, Molly and Kate."

Singing the Blues

   The pop song “Singing the Blues” was written in 1920 by a team of composers (Robinson-Conrad-Lewis-Young) and was recorded that year by both the Original Dixieland Jass Band and singer Aileen Stanley. Both recordings were on the Victor label.

   But the inspiration for my improvisation here is the famous 1927 recording on the Okeh label by Bix Beiderbecke and his group. Bix’s jazz is not as brilliant as that of Louis Armstrong, nor is it as dramatic. But it is wonderful stuff, more complex harmonically and more purely melodic. It is serene and musical. I have long loved this style.

   I am not trying to recreate an improvisation in a historical style here, though. Rather I am reacting to Bix’s music in my own way. I sing the tune, dance the rhythm, always following the harmonic progression while using the stride style texture, mixing melodic riffs with tone clusters and dissonant tones, spreading the activity over the whole keyboard, walking a fine line between Bix’s music of a hundred years ago with that of today.

Pennies from Heaven

“Pennies from Heaven” is a fine old tune from the Great American Songbook. It was introduced by Bing Crosby in a movie of the same name in 1936. My take on it owes a debt to Indian classical music. Odd as it seems, I think it all works nicely.

You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To

"This recording of the Cole Porter tune, "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To" (1943), is from a concert I played with the wonderful jazz bassist, Dennis Marks."

Nowhere Man

This solo piano improvisation on the Lennon-McCartney classic "Nowhere Man" is taken from my "Beatle Jazz” album, released by Mastersound Recordings in 1998. I have always loved this tune. It’s very much like a folk song. My fantasy runs free here, subjecting the beautifully simple tune to ever more adventurous melodic arabesques and polytonal harmonies.