It’s organic, and sounds almost improvised — except that it is impossibly perfect in every detail. Its soundscape is vast, deep, and richly pianistic, but look at the construction and you’ll see the spare elegance of Bach. It has a loving tenderness, and a longing, that’s unlike anything else, yet seems instantly familiar. And it’s gorgeous.

What is it? Chopin, of course!

There’s nothing quite like learning to play a piece of music to really get inside it. With this one, like many I’ve shared here, I knew it was excellent…

The word “étude” means study — a practice piece, designed to exercise a particular technique. Études for musicians are generally dry, repetitious pieces, not music to perform, but just exercises for practice. So Chopin’s choice of that title may seem a little understated, or even ironic: his études certainly do exercise one’s technique, but they are expressive, poetic, passionate, and anything but dry.

I think the title fits beautifully: shouldn’t learning always be this way?

An interesting aspect of the piece I work to bring…

This is a very familiar piece (to piano aficionados, anyway) — but you’ll find Don’s performance a little refreshingly unfamiliar. It’s not a wild departure from custom, but there’s just a subtle tip in the balance in his performance that makes the feeling of the piece quite different.

In the last entry I mentioned the question of foreground and background. When most pianists play this piece, they put the right hand squarely in the foreground: what you hear is a series of speedy cascades down, a fun bit of finger gymnastics. But when Don plays it, he balances…

I’m just back today from a wonderful, wonderful trip to NYC and New Haven, CT, which was a reminder of just how wonderful family and friendship are. And although I’m really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed (I’ve been up since 5:20 AM Minnesota time), I did manage to edit and master tonight something I’d recorded beforehand for you.

As I mentioned last week, I’m working on a set of short pieces, and in that set, I’m thinking constantly of Schumann. He wrote many sets of short…

Here is a second selection from this year’s Keys Please to follow Todd’s little musical rattlesnake adventure. This is an improvisation by Carei Thomas, the rattlesnake’s narrator, now on piano. I thought — and he said afterward — that there was a little nod to my own funny little improvs in this one, especially in the way it starts with a very low note and a very high one … but it’s definitely a Carei thing!

Some improvs have a definite form (head…

The Niobrara River starts in Wyoming and flows through Nebraska. Wikipedia tells me that the original native name in the Omaha-Ponca language, Ní Ubthátha khe, means something akin to “water spread out horizontally” or “wide-spreading waters.”

I did not know that when I chose the title; the word’s music simply seemed to me to fit my piano’s music. Though it’s accidental, it seems to me that the visual fits.

I later produced a remix of this piece, with an…

A mysterious improv: snaking, atmospheric, perpetually unresolved … sort of … lusky. What can I say? The word seems right.

My family has always loved Wyoming names, particularly three neighboring towns we’d sometimes see driving between Colorado and Minnesota: Lusk, Lingle and Torrington. Such fine words! They’ve long been part of our family lexicon, and I’ve dedicated my first three improvs to them to help…

Meeteetse: from a Shoshone term for “nearby”. A sparkling word that still lingers on stolen land, and it seemed to fit this piece.

In case you’re wondering (not that it’s likely you were), I come up with the piece first, then choose a title that fits. It’s usually the same way with the compositions.

Cold, thin air. Winter light. A solitary high place.

Today’s recording brings In the Hands over the one hour mark: since I started this blog at the end of August, it’s brought over 65 minutes of free piano music to the web. Yay!

This recording also marks a more dubious milestone: for the first time I’m late with the post (it just turned Wednesday in Minnesota as I type this). I’m not sure anyone cares, or even notices, but I do try to keep myself honest with this Tuesday/Saturday plan.

Chopin can get very complex, virtuosic, or just generally full of big piano sounds. But always…

Here’s another piece from the suite of dances I’m working on, the same set which also includes the Entropic Waltz and Cradle Waltz.

The composition, which was tricky, has actually been done for a while … but learning to play it has proved quite a bit of work! Though it may not sound like it, the piece is quite difficult — it has different layers moving in different registers of the keyboard, and so playing it essentially involves using two hands to create the illusion of three or four.

…

Shelter. A safe place.

I’m returning from Colorado tomorrow, but it will likely be a while before my piano is back in tune and I’m recording again. Will the blog go silent, you ask? Fear not! I recorded a little round of improvs a few weeks ago, so that’s likely what you’ll be hearing here for the next couple of weeks.

When I post a bunch of improvs in a row like this, part of me cringes at them starting to feel like filler material — but I set out to post recordings twice a week, and by golly, I’m sticking to that! So I hope you can enjoy…

The Kickstarter project for The Broken Mirror of Memory has passed its first major milestone! I’m now able to pay for printing the CD, and distributing in online music stores. Huzzah!! In celebration, and as a huge thank you to all the awesome backers who have pitched in so far, I’m posting part 1 (out of 4) of the piece.

Here it is!

This music comes right out of the gate at full speed, the piano and the bass clarinet in a…

Today’s recording is a composition of my own, which I see I play a bit faster than I did three years ago. I like the new version — I think the faster tempo in the middle sustains the structural momentum a bit better — but of course I may have changed my mind about that three years from now. That’s the fun of interpretation: it’s never done!

The title is based on my mishearing of a Tori Amos lyric (from Cruel). I generally go for titles that are evocative and somehow seem to fit, without actually having any clear meaning that listeners will try…

Things may have been quiet on the blog, but I’ve been doing tons of music work lately. The recent round of Zo went well: I took a bit of a risk playing mostly pieces that were fresh out of the practice oven (or, in a couple of cases, still baking), but people seemed to enjoy it, and I was certainly satisfied.

(If you want to know about future concerts, you should get on the mailing list.)

Concerts done, I’m now composing day and night, quite productively. I now have a complete first draft of my set of dances! The last big obstacle was…

Bells? The memory of bells? A fanciful description of the memory of bells?

Maybe not bells at all.

As the lockout of Minnesota’s two world-class orchestras continues, I’ve given a lot of thought to the dilemma. A credible outside perspective is hard to find, and we’re left in a “he said / she said” back and forth between management and musicians. Listening to it all, I believe them both on their key points: yes, an organization that is drawing heavily from its endowment cannot last — and yes, the proposed cuts would be an artistic kneecapping for the orchestras.

I’ve thought hard, and I’ve made up my mind. To accept the financial status quo is to doom the orchestras to a…

The NYT asks, “Is Classical Music Dying?” My answer is a single two-letter word. (Hint: starts with ”N.”)

Like many who lament the imminent demise of classical music, Les Dreyer focuses on large institutions: orchestras, radio stations, record labels. He misses half the picture. While classical music is seeing a heart-sickening crumbling of the large, it is undergoing a renaissance of the small.

Thanks to a surge of amateur musicianship, more people are…

Nothing prepares you for what the doctor says:

“You have brain cancer. The tumor is large and growing. We need to remove approximately one third of your brain, and we need to remove it immediately. If we don’t, you will be dead in five years.”

You are stunned. This was just supposed to be a routine physical. You’ve always been a little bit nervous about medical visits, but your doctor has praised your …

Last night in tango class, Florencia was trying to impress upon us leaders the importance of learning to follow as well, so we know what the dance feels like to the followers, and so we have a chance to feel what the really good leaders do. You can’t just learn by watching, she explains, because so much of what’s in the body’s motion isn’t apparent to the eye. “Sometimes, you’ll see somebody dancing and they look really good, but then you dance with them and ugh!” — she screws up her face — “it feels terrible!” Conversely, many…

My recent mastering experiments have been all about reproducing … well, not the literal sound, but the musical spirit of real-life piano — but of course there’s another side to this software I’m using, and it seemed a shame not to play with it! So I went and had some fun with Niobrara. (Some fragments of another improv are also tucked away in there; a free CD to the first person to correctly identify which one.) I hope you enjoy this little musical excursion!

All…

When I first saw the sheet music for today’s piece, I was a bit boggled. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a piece that sounded less like it looked! You might figure it for some sort of virtuosic toccata thing, all flash and texture, but no, it is slow, minimal melody with a lush, dark accompaniment.

The notation makes a little more sense if you think of Bach’s preludes. Do I grow predictable claiming everything is full of Bach? Very well, I grow predictable. This one is full of Bach: the layering; the figuration…

This is one movement of my cello piece, The Broken Mirror of Memory. Unlike most of the recordings in this blog, this isn’t a recording from my home studio, but rather from a concert at Macalester. And yes, I admit, it’s actually an old recording (2003), which is sort of cheating on this whole “two new recordings every week” scheme — but it is at least previously unreleased, so I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.

The cellist is Diana Frazier, a family friend who was just wonderful in taking…

I have been busy applying for a fellowship, and also writing writing writing more music. Here is a new one in the set of dances I’ve been working on — as with the others I’ve recorded, a rough performance (there’s a section in the middle that is horrendously hobbled together), but enough to give you the idea. (The score.)

This is probably the weirdest, most abstract thing I’ve ever written. I love it. But be warned: those of you who found the …