for solo piano
duration: variable (around 5’)
PROGRAM NOTE
This work was written after I received news of the passing of David MacBride, a wonderful composer whom I studied with at The Hartt School.
The piece features two quiet, sequential soundings of all 88 keys on the piano, in two different orders. The first time, the pianist plays in a steady rhythm; the second time, they choose rhythms freely. I was thinking of the early piano music of Morton Feldman, with its uniformly quiet dynamics and (sometimes) freely chosen rhythms and pitches, as well as John Cage's late music and the first movement of David Lang's Memory Pieces.