THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECES ON A NEW KIND OF AIR

To The Living-My jumping off point for this piece was the aira from the goldburg variations. This is my favorite of the goldburg pieces and also the simplest. What I borrowed from it is the way the left hand out lines the chords very slowly one note at a time. For me, to the living is about celebrating and appreciating life even when its hard. It almost feels like traveling in the future 100 years and every one you know is gone and your watching home videos, and all you can think is about how special your life was and how blind you were to its specialness.

A New Kind Of Air-One of the things I like about this piece is the process the melody goes though in constructing it self. It starts with an extremely simple idea and then travels though multiple cycles of of embellishment till the real melody has finally been constructed. This is a very Steve Reich idea, but approached from a different angle (i.e. not using his beats for rest thing). Later in the work there is a section that is an ambient wash of notes. I realized trying to notate something like this is just silly. Its super easy to play but hard to notate, so I didn’t. The piece concludes with a slow restatement of the theme.

The Hope Garden-The name for this piece came from an experience I had in the summer of 2023. Me and my wife were making a new flower bed in our back yard. Were were making it in the shady part of our yard where it would be easier for my wife to maintain it even in the middle of health issues. Even though we had yet to put a single plant in the bed, the feeling of joy and potential over our empty flower bed was palpable. The ending theme was a musical idea that kept popping up as I worked on different pieces and every time I would reject it, but it finally found a home at the end this one.

A Strange Liberty-I wanted this piece to feel like a hymn. The title is taken from a poem I wrote (The companion poetry book to a new kind of air is due out in 2025).

The Longest Night Of The Year- This is an obvious reference to the winter solstice. Which is a symbol of hope and things turning around, even though that particular night is the longest. Musically this piece has no sense of development but just keeps recycling the same idea with slight (almost imperceptible variations). This piece goes along with this poem.

A NEW KIND OF AIR

This is not the project I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make it so I put it off for a year.

Here is the story

Part 1- The last couple of years I have been self producing concerts and presenting works for string quartets with a vocalist (tribunal and eight billion/one). Unfortunately classical music is extremely expensive to produce. My pieces required 5 musicians being paid for 5 hours of rehearsal and performance time. This really adds up and at the end of the day this is a one shot thing, and its super hard to get people to events. I did the math for a recent concert and it cost 46.29 for every min. of preformed music. More and more this was feeling financially unsustainable.

Part 2- My wife has struggled with on going health issues over the last couple of years. It made me ask the question, what type of music would serve her in this season. How could she connect with music in a meaningful way in the midst of challenging circumstances. How can you make music (which is a stimulant) to help calm overstimulation.

Part 3- I have a piano related hand injury that has lasted 3 or 4 years. I can still play the piano but I have to be carefull how much I play and how hard I play. A solution to this very practical problem was to write piano music specially for me to play (I am a composer after all). Knowing my abilities as a player and what causes hand strain, I could make music that was perfectly suited to my situation.

I put all these pieces together, embracing the challenge of the limitations, and wrote the music for a new kind of air. I think I was hesitant about this project at first for several reasons. I’ve realized more and more rhythm is becoming my main organization force in my music. The gas in the tank (for me) that makes the whole thing go is the rhythm. With my string quartet projects I could have five lines of independent rhythm which is pretty much all I would want, but with this project I was limited to two hands (and maybe even more importantly one brain). It was almost like, how do I even make music that’s interesting if I don’t have this. Secondly I am much more of a composer than a piano player and on top of that I’m a piano player who is injured. This put I lot of limits on what the music could be.

Several things surprised me as I worked on this project. I soon discovered hidden pockets in my head where different values were competing with each other. One value being making the best music I could, and the other value being I want to prove that I am good at playing the piano. This really surprised me, that unconsciously I could be making decisions that would be for value 2 and sacrificing value 1, when thats obviously a bad choice. Over and over for this project what served the piece was the simplest of solutions. For example, most of the pieces the left hand part is extremely pared down, often playing very slow half notes. To my logical mind this felt weak but to my listening self its what felt like served the piece the best. The whole project really felt like a practice in musical humility. The second thing I soon realized was all I really had to work with was melody. Which meant the melody had to be so pure and right. There was a lot of struggle getting this right, even though on the surface its not complicated. I recently heard a musican talk about the sweet spot, where the music is both simple and deep and that really sums up what I was going for.

As I evaluate the music now and listen though it, It feels like one huge deep breath. Its music that is introverted, slow to speak, delicate, venerable and extremely non exhibitionary. Its like a moment of pause where you are both remembering the things you should remember and forgetting those you should forget. It feels like music thats almost listening to you.

VIKINGUR OLAFSSON’S GOLDBERG VARATIONS

I’ve been listening to this almost non stop and wanted to share some thoughts.

-The first thing that struck me when I started to listen was the sound of the piano it self. I have been listening to Glenn Gould’s 1955 version for years which I would define (sound/recording wise) as extremely dry. There is no sound room or space in the the recording its almost as if the microphones are in the piano it self. This on the other hand has a much broader and open sound. Which gives every thing a little more sweetness.

-Secondly (again in contrast to 1955 GG) I found the delivery a bit more smooth and legato, Though I always liked Gleen Goulds delivery (dry and unromantic) I found this recording again, to be a little bit richer and sweeter keeping the notes more connected. If you listen closely though the recording you can hear Olafsson use a really short and sharp left hand delivery which I think is a nice touch and can help create a little more contrast between the melodic lines.

-Over all I found the tempos to be a bit more relaxed than what I was use to. Even looking at the running time of these two records Olafsson’s is close to twice as long (I’m not sure if difference in repeats makes any difference in this). To my surprise I found I liked his tempos better than Gould’s. A number of the pieces are not super long to begin with, and then if you take them at break neck speed that makes them even shorter. For me this can make some of the transition for piece to piece feel a little abrupt in Goulds version.

-Probably my biggest complaint about Olafsson’s recording is in the aria (which is my favorite piece). The piece is broken in to two sections an, A and a B, and both of these sections are repeated twice (so it looks like this: AABB). I find repeat going into the second B section to be super clunky.