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.

CLASSICAL MUSIC IS NOT A GENRE!!!!!!!!!!!

Its mostly a specific type of process for creating and performing music, and that process is notation. The story of classical music begins with Gregorian chant, and the creation of musical notation. Since then its been over 500 hundred years of people from all over the world using that process to create some of the most divergent music imaginable. Just compare the music of Bach, to Schoenberg to Philip Glass. They are just about as far apart from each other as music could be. Their musical values are almost alien to each other, but they all have this process in common (on a secondary level they all use similar instrumentation). I think its a problem when classical music is conceived of a certain type of sound (aka sounds like Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven). This is a huge limiting factor for classical music to over come, both for composer, and audience. The process of a composer using notation opens up gigantic realms of musical possibilities that could never be achieved with any other method. And the majority of these possibilities wont “sound like classical music”.

YOU HAVE TO LIKE BACH!!!!!!

Bach is the only musician I honestly think every person should listen to. Its so rich, its so right and beautiful and logical. His music is dense and gentle, brainy and sweet, complex and approachable. When I listen, its a music I have to let wash over me, there is just so much melodic activity you cant sort it all out (strangely thats the same way to listen to ambient music which is almost its polar opposite) It just keeps coming and coming. Its music that feels healthy to listen to, like being in the sunshine, or talking a walk. He is the mother river that so much music has come from. His admires include Bill Evans, Bud Powell, Stravinsky, Schournberg, Steve Reich, Joe Harley (points if you know who this is), Dieter Rams (points if you know who this is) and Steve Jobs. For me his contrapuntal writing (melody on melody) I find hugely fascinating, and opens up a whole new worlds of musical possibilities. It seems to me an area in music that has largely been underdeveloped (especially out side of the world of classical music).

It blows my mind that in his life time Bach was only regionally famous and that mostly due to his keyboard and improvising abilities. Also in Bach’s lifetime the trends in music were already beginning to shift to a more pared down less cluttered texture and he was becoming out dated and out of fashion. But here we are 300 hundred years later still talking about and still listening to his music.

Suggested listening

Brandonburg concertos

Cello suites

The Goldburg variations