My Piano Albums Project

Description and History

Starting in the Summer of 2022, I will be releasing albums from my Piano Albums Project at the rate of one every six weeks.  All the albums are now scheduled to be released by late 2025.  I have included a listing of the albums, their record date, and their release date (or expected release date) at the end of this essay.  

I have been releasing my piano albums for many years now, but I’ve never really addressed the entirety of the project, which is how I think of it.  Just what exactly is this enormous Piano Album Project?  The short answer is that it is a collection of fifty-seven albums of my piano improvisations recorded between 1996-2016.  It has been the center of my creative life throughout the second half of my musical career.  Each album is a complete work on its own, but many individual improvisations have also played important roles as blueprints for my written compositions.  The long answer is more complicated.

In the beginning, I did not intend for the improvisations to be available commercially.  The improvisations, which I recorded as MIDI files, were to be part of a process which used improvisation as a starting point for the creation of written compositions.  Nearly every composition I have written after 1993 has used improvisation in this way, as both the origin of the musical material and a general suggestion of the musical structure of the written work.  

Some of the resulting compositions can be heard or even traced clearly in the original improvisation and some cannot.  It depends on the music, instrumentation, and the function of the piece being written.  In some of the pieces, the improvisation has been greatly enhanced and expanded; in some, I have remained rather close to the original.  I have found this method to allow me the most freedom and creativity while keeping in mind a general idea of where I am going.  I also find improvisation to be the most direct path to my creative subconscious.  

Early in my career, I found that when I re-imagined a piece, such as when I orchestrated a piano work, I was more imaginative than I was when creating the original.  Working with improvisations seems to emphasize this trait.  Some composers like to develop their compositions from small amounts of musical material, creating an integrated structure along the way.  The danger of working from the bottom up like that is that the composer may create a beautiful structure that is not very musical.  The kiss of death for a composer is to have a musician say their piece is “very interesting.”  

An improvisation, on the other hand, is often quite musical, but not always very tightly structured, sometimes barely structured at all.  I have found that I am more creative and inspired when trying to make structural sense out of something which is already musical than trying to squeeze some music out of something that makes perfect sense but is otherwise not very attractive.  

Though I had been working on my improvisation to improve the intuitive quality of my composition, after about four or five years I began to notice that the improvisations themselves were becoming consistently pretty good. I began to entertain the idea that I might be able to release them as a recording.  I had accumulated quite a few MIDI files and thought surely a few of them would make a good album.

I started to go through dozens of recordings, which I found pretty tedious.  Over two or three months, I had narrowed it down to four tracks.  Then I went through the process of finding a label that would release it, mastering it, pressing it, sending out press releases, the whole shebang.  I released my first album, Dreamcatcher, in December of 1998.  Many people liked it, even the critics, but many people did not have a clue what I was doing.  I was generally happy with the reaction but I hardly sold any CD’s.  I wasn’t sure what I thought about the whole experience and didn’t know what to do next.  So I went back to my original plan of using improvisations in my composition.

I spent the next four years writing some major compositions, using improvisations: Millennial Opening (1999) for orchestra, String Quartet No. 2 (2000), Vision Quest (2002) for double bass and piano, and Meditation at Oyster River (2003), a cantata for soprano and orchestra (or piano) on poetry of Theodore Roethke.  My composing and my job as a bassist with the Phoenix Symphony took up most of my time.  I would improvise on the piano just for myself in my spare time.  However, during a break in my symphony schedule in the spring of 2001, I sat down and did some recording again.  I found that most of the takes were good and decided that five of them would make a good album.  This was the album Snowmelt.  I saved it for later and went back to my other projects.

In the summer of 2003, I was having trouble writing the Roethke cantata for my sister Eleanor Stallcop-Horrox.  I decided that I would record some improvisations for a while to get the juices flowing.  Finally, by mid-July I was able to put together a good plan for the cantata (using one of the improvisations) but when I returned to the recordings in 2004, I found there were two good albums there.  They became Cricket Cages and Dandelion Seeds.

After that, recording in the summer when the symphony had a three-month break and I could seriously concentrate became my standard routine.  I found that the nine months in between sessions allowed my music and playing to change enough to justify another round of recording.  I would wait to do my initial editing until at least a year had passed. In fact, I wouldn’t even listen to the recordings after recording them.  That way I could approach them with fresh ears.  

After the cantata, I found that the compositional procedures I had used for adapting my improvisations into compositions were no longer working.  My improvisation was improving to the point where my reworking was no longer improving the original.  Some adjustment and adaptation seemed to be all that was needed.  My compositions were becoming little more than transcriptions.  I was unnerved by that, and found that I needed a few years to decide what direction to take.  The result was that I now spent nearly all of my creative efforts on improvisation, recording, and editing.  

Nearly every summer between the years 2005-2016 I spent from two to six weeks recording improvisation at the piano.  I would edit recordings during the symphony season, as this was a much less intense procedure.  I composed only a few pieces during this period.  The most notable piece was Five Bells (2010), an orchestral tone poem on an Australian poem of the same name by Kenneth Slessor.  This work was an edited improvisation that was transcribed, adapted, and orchestrated in response to a commission for the Arizona 2010 All-State Orchestra.

Though I would occasionally improvise in public, mostly as an example at concerts of my other written works, performing was never the purpose of my improvisation.  I was focused on the creative aspect of what I was doing and not trying to put together a “show.”  I have, however, transcribed and performed several suites from my recordings, transcribing them essentially the way I recorded them.  This opened up another can of worms.  When composing, you set up certain parameters in advance and then work within them, unless you change them.  But in my improvisation, I play little more than note-to-note.  I speed up, I slow down, I stretch, all of which would be considered interpretive techniques – except now they are the original.  How do I transcribe that without being ridiculously complex.  I spent way too much time trying to find or design a simplified notation that would account for all these rhythmic anomalies.  In the end, none of unorthodox notations were either attractive or did the job.  

But I did use two different methods of transcription that were both effective.  One was the traditional method which transcribed the music preserving the rhythmic relationships I perceived to be there.  The other used traditional notation, but transcribed the rhythm against a rigid and unrelated fixed tempo grid.  

When I record, the computer sets a default tempo.  Since my music is very free, I ignore this tempo and don’t use a click track, but the computer still uses the tempo as a reference.  When transcribing, I decided to try using this default as a tempo to notate the music AGAINST.  It was like looking at a landscape through a grid of squares and then drawing a picture using graph paper!  I had to make some small changes so the notation didn’t look ridiculous, but it surprised me and was actually quite successful. But it was really weird!  I learned and performed a couple of the transcriptions, just to be sure, and found them to be very faithful to the ebb and flow of the original improvisation.  Unfortunately, I had to completely unlearn and change how I thought about the music originally.  All the rhythmic relationships were different.  I decided that though it worked, it was not something I could live with permanently.  (A couple of the suites are still notated this way, the suites from Floating Leaves and Night Drift)  

Below is the opening to “Call of the Crossing” from the Suite from Bridge to Nowhere.  The first example is traditional and shows the rhythmic relationships of the music.  (This is the one I used.) 

The second example uses the default tempo and shows the timing of how the selection of the improvisation was actually played. 

Changing the relationships like that made me realize that I did indeed have set opinions about what those relationships were, despite the freedom of improvisation.  So I finally ended up just notating them in the more conventional fashion, as I heard them and as I sensed the relationships.  This was a more difficult procedure for me, but it was much more accessible for the performer.  It also didn’t drive me nuts when I played them.

All during this time, the music business in general was going through a complete overhaul.  My experience with my first CD seemed positive but wasteful.  It cost several thousand dollars but wasn’t well marketed.  By the mid-2000’s, it began to look like CD’s were on their way out, first with iPods and then cell phones.  The whole music market had completely changed.  In 2008, I found CD Baby, a digital distributor for independent artists, and I gradually started to distribute my albums online.  Expenses were reduced to a fraction of the cost of physical CD’s and a lack of sales meant only a lack of royalties.  I remember a composer friend having eight boxes of LP’s in his studio!  Inventory can be a nightmare! Even CD Baby has stopped selling CD’s!  Now they have stopped selling downloads too and only distribute and collect royalties.  As time has elapsed, the process has become even more streamlined and cheaper.  My early albums are still producing digital royalties and remain available.  As of this writing, I have released 33 of 57 albums, and I can still park my car in the garage.

In 2005, as my summer routine picked up steam, I became more productive.  By 2009, I was recording five or six albums each summer.  In 2012, I recorded twelve.  In 2015, I recorded fourteen.  At the end of every cycle I was completely exhausted.  I began to realize that there would come a point at which I could not do this anymore.  That point arrived in the summer of 2016.  I tried many different approaches, and was finally able to produce one final album, but I was done. 

I retired from the orchestra in 2018 and have spent my time composing.  I still compose using improvisations, and because of all the recording, I now have a backlog of nearly two full days of music from which to choose.  I am also mastering and preparing the release of the remaining albums.  As the experience of recording the albums begins to recede, I find they mean more to me than ever.  When I passed my 72nd birthday this year, I realized that I had better speed up the release schedule of the remaining albums.  I am in pretty good shape at present, but if the pandemic has taught me anything, it is that one’s health can change at any moment.

As I look back on the project now and all the music it has produced, I have some mixed feelings, but no regrets.  Improvisation is such a right-brained process that it is hard for me to be analytical about it.  The tracks that have the most plays seem random to me.  I would have never guessed that those tracks had something special.  I must choose tracks to transcribe or use in my compositions, but my reasons are personal and a drop in the bucket when compared to the preferences of today’s streaming market.  

I look at all the music in these recordings and I can’t help but think about how J. S. Bach wrote five CYCLES of cantatas.  A cycle is a multi-movement cantata for each Sunday and Holy Day of the year.  He wrote FIVE of them, of which we have recovered about half.  I have played or listened to probably less than one percent of them, and I am someone who has a fifty-year professional career and loves Bach!  How can an average listener even conceive of what Bach has done?

So who is going to listen to my albums?  Why would they do it?  All the music literature says, “Know your audience!”  Oh, give me a break! Sometime last summer, I noticed that on Bandcamp someone was methodically listening to all of my albums in order.  Most of my plays are always my more recent releases, but this person started at the beginning and was going through an album or more every day, listening to entire tracks.  I wondered what he was thinking.  I wanted to ask him questions.  I remember sitting in a music library once and listening to all the works of Anton Webern in one day.  There aren’t that many pieces and they are short, but that was still a few hours.  That also was certainly enough Webern! I learned some things about him, but I didn’t listen to him again.  There is something to be said for modern streaming that a person can find and listen to just about anything ever recorded, even the cantatas of Bach!  I wonder whether Bach would be jealous? Somehow, I doubt it.

CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF ALBUMS

ALBUM TITLE	RECORD DATE	RELEASE DATE (projected)
1. Dreamcatcher	1997-98	12/7/1998
2. Snowmelt	2001	11/6/2009
3.  Cricket Cages	2003	11/19/2009
4.  Dandelion Seeds	2003	11/19/2009
5.  Floating Leaves	2005-06	5/10/2013
6.  Cascades of Fog	2007	7/1/2013
7.  Frozen Geysers	2007	11/1/2013
8.  Ash Fork Verses – Set No. 1	2008	1/6/2014
9.  Ash Fork Verses – Set No. 2	2008	4/7/2014
10.  Ash Fork Verses – Set No. 3	2008	7/7/2014
11.  Haibun For Those Washed Away	2009	4/20/2015
12.  Myths and Fairy Tales	2009	9/1/2015
13.  Night Drift	2009	10/15/2016
14.  Of the Bells Bells Bells	2010	1/20/2017
15.  Bridge To Nowhere	2010	4/15/2017
16.  Quail Song	2010	7/15/2017
17.  Of Time and Memories	2010	9/29/2017
18.  Magic Garden	2010	12/15/2017
19.  Waiting Into the Night	2010	4/1/2018
20.  Recovery	2010	6/25/2018
21.  Grind	2012	9/7/2018
22.  Hold That Thought	2012	11/16/2018
23.  Just Add Water	2012	2/1/2019
24.  Downhill	2012	11/28/2019
25.  Retreat	2012	4/13/2020
26.  Quandary	2012	11/26/2020
27.  Existential Doubt	2012	4/12/2021
28.  Fragile	2012	1/6/2022
29.  Divines	2012	2/15/2022
30.  Gyro	2012	4/1/2022
31.  Feint	2012	5/15/2022
32.  Adorn	2012	8/6/2022
33.  Celestial Palette	2013	9/1/2022
34.  Delirious	2013	10/13/2022
35.  Divergence	2013	12/1/2022
36.  The Bringer of Old Age	2013	1/13/2023
37.  Condensation	2013	3/2/2023
38.  Longhand	2014	4/15/2023
39.  Wind and Chimes	2014	6/2/2023
40.  The Drones of Contemplation	2014	7/14/2023
41.  Cherished Moments	2014	9/1/2023
42.  Soul Trek	2014	10/20/2023
43.  Interface	2015	12/1/2023
44.  Daydream	2015	1/19/2024
45.  Turning	2015	3/1/2024
46.  Campaign	2015	4/19/2024
47.  Uncivilization	2015	5/31/2024
48.  Divertimenti	2015	7/19/2024
49.  Storyteller	2015	8/30/2024
50.  The Forever Year	2015	10/18/2024
51.  Simple Riffs	2015	11/29/2024
52.  The Climate Generation	2015	1/17/2025
53.  Disconnect	2015	2/28/2025
54.  Interstition	2015	4/18/2025
55.  Over The Edge	2015	5/30/2025
56.  Midnight Sun	2015	7/18/2025
57.  Pillar of Fire	2016	9/5/2025

Grind

Grind is an album of piano tracks loosely organized around the concept of work. There are many different attitudes toward work, and many different types of work, as well. Personally, my attitude towards work is rather complex, as much of it is creative and totally absorbing, and all of it is artistic. For much of my life I have been a “workaholic,” but a lot of the time my work has been self-motivated.

For my entire career, my “employment” has been playing double bass for a major symphony orchestra. For some musicians, this constitutes a pinnacle position; some non-musicians do not consider this to be work at all. Actually a symphony orchestra job can be quite demanding, though the rewards can be great as well, and it is more physically taxing than one might expect. Even so, I’ve never worked more than about 25 hours per week on the job. This, however, does not take into account all the practicing I’ve done at home. You start to add everything up – rehearsals, concerts, practicing, six days per week, working mornings and nights, driving, travel – and it starts to sound a lot more like work. Most musicians also teach lessons, which can take up most of their remaining time. I have never done much teaching because I have filled my extra time with creating and performing my own music. As I said, it’s complicated.

Music and the concept of a steady pulse are one of the great inventions in human history. It allows people to work TOGETHER. Working together involves synchronization and without music and dance, that would have never happened. My album, however, is about our personal relationship to work, rather than the work itself, and is more emotional than physical.

1. Work Song. My music tends to not be very rhythmically steady, however, repetition and sequence are often major components. Then again, so is variation, and this usually doesn’t let me repeat an idea intact more than twice. I explained to a friend once that I tended to continually vary my ostinatos (repeated patterns), and he told me a varied ostinato was an oxymoron. The upshot is that I don’t often get into a “groove,” as the first thing I vary is often the rhythm. This track, however, does try hard to get “groovy” at times, and is about as close as I ever get to a work song. Just the same, “John Henry” it’s not.
2. Outburst.  Of course, one of the common associations with work is stress. Even a workaholic does not like to have more to do than he or she can finish in the time available. The stress can mount and explode occasionally. That is what happens in this track. Of course, blowing up doesn’t help, and after the pressure is released, the work continues.
3. Chorale.  A chorale is like a hymn, and is meant to be sung by the congregation. To me, hymn singing is a little like everybody doing the same work. Together. It doesn’t help that I’m such a bad singer. It is not something I am usually very thrilled about doing, but I often do it anyway. After all it’s short.
4. Daydream.  Sometimes your mind wonders. This is especially true when I am doing creative work, as letting my mind wonder is part of the gig. I fall asleep at my desk more often than I care to admit. (My chair is pretty comfortable.) I’ve also occasionally fallen asleep at my piano. (Despite the fact it is really uncomfortable.) I even once nearly fell asleep while I was recording. (Check out “Drifting Off” from my album Night Drift.) I don’t recommend drifting off when somebody is paying you, however.
5. Dew Point. Because this is the point (temperature) at which water condenses out of the air, I like to use it as a metaphor for creative inspiration. Sometimes ideas seem to appear out of nowhere. At other times, they don’t. I guess, sometimes, it is just not humid enough.
6. Hard Knocks. The School of Hard Knocks can be an effective teacher, and usually involves as much work or more than any other form of education. That said, what inspired the title of this track was the series of repeated notes that take over the music about half way through. It sounds like somebody knocking, hard.
7. Hunting For Faeries. I’ve always been intrigued by the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fascination with spiritualism, psychic research, and magical phenomena. How could the creator of Sherlock Holmes get sucked in by this stuff? But he spent a great deal of effort trying to prove their existence, and he is not the only person to work hard at something preposterous.
8. Nocturne.  I have often worked deep into the night, though as I have aged I have gradually shifted to morning. But the nighttime can be magically quiet and full of imaginative promise. The swirling of ideas and myriad of possible relationships can keep me awake even when I need to be asleep. The magic does not always make it into the harsh light of day, but sometimes it does.
9. Intermezzo.  We all have to take breaks. We all need to rest, if only for a bit. That doesn’t mean we can shut our mind off completely. Sometimes a distraction will allow our subconscious to work out the details of something important. Then we end up working through our break anyway.
10. Chanson.  A chanson is a rather lyric-driven French art song dealing often with more serious subjects like conditions of the working class, and is usually rather free as it follows the rhythms of the French language. Of course, my chanson has no lyrics and isn’t about anything, but it is rather free anyway.
11. Toccata.  This is a “touch piece” as opposed to a sonata or “sound piece.” It is usually distinguished by a technical display of some sort. In other words, it has lots of fast notes. I was tempted to call this track Prelude and Toccata because, though it starts with a splash, it slows down before really taking off. I didn’t start the piece thinking “toccata,” I discovered it along the way. The toccata section continues until I get tired. After all, it was a lot of work.

This album is my twenty-first solo piano album and was recorded at my home in Phoenix, Arizona.  It was released on September 7, 2018 by SMS Recordings.

Recovery

This album is about healing, it’s not intended to be able to heal. Music can be soothing, and many aspects of music can be therapeutic. I participated in a music therapy project a couple of years ago with Alzheimer’s patients, and learned first hand the kinds of effects music can bring to those suffering and struggling to maintain their basic humanity. But that is a different subject and not what this album is about.

By comparison, my musical intention is more mundane. It deals with everyday recovery from everyday loss by everyday people. Impermanence is a fact, but it is the fuel upon which life (and nonlife) sustains itself and moves on. Being attuned to the impermanence of beauty, happiness, and peace is a gift, and it teaches valuable lessons for dealing with ugliness, sorrow, and conflict.

1. Song of Longing. Loss is difficult; it always leaves a hole that takes time to fill. Though it brings emptiness, it also brings a flood of memories that are often beautiful. Loss does not bring happiness, but the sorrow it brings is the result of happiness.
2. 3am, Wide Awake. Recovery can make sleep difficult, even frightening. When I am awake in the middle of the night, it is more often from anticipation than reflection. But this is not the case with everyone, and for some, sleep brings no peace. That doesn’t mean they don’t get tired.
3. Underwater. Recovering often seems like you can’t breathe.
4. Death of a Bumblebee. (Apologies to Rimsky-Korsakov.) Living in the desert, most of my homes have had either a pool or, in one case, a fishpond. Bees come to the water for moisture, and sometimes they end up going for a swim. Not a good idea. I save them if I can.
5. Just Not The Same. A friend told me this once after a terrifying event with one of their children. What we miss was sometimes not there to begin with. That doesn’t make it any easier.
6. Just Suppose. Guilt.
7. Sleeping Dragon. Sometimes the best we can do for a while is to put the dragon to sleep. We tiptoe around and try not to wake him up. Woe to those who wake him up for you.
8. Sleeping Princess. Where there is a sleeping dragon, there is also usually a sleeping princess. We may try to ignore everything for a while, but closing up to sorrow and ugliness is also to ignore happiness and beauty. She can awaken too, and she is not always happy about being ignored.
9. Confession. More guilt.
10. Bounce.  The lessons of impermanence are patience and timing. Peaks and valleys are part of everything. On the way down, knowledge offers resilience, and we bounce instead of crash, usually.

The album was recorded at my home in Phoenix AZ in November 2010. It is Album #20 and was released on June 25, 2018 by SMS Recordings SMS021.

Magic Garden

Many times I have realized that my thoughts and hopes about life, happiness, my career, and many other things have turned out to be innocent fantasy. Innocence comes in many forms, from simple naivety to outright delusion. Sometimes the effect is inconsequential; sometimes it permeates the core of our existence. This album explores innocence through the metaphor of a magic garden. From the Garden of Eden to the “Primrose Path,” we have all been there! Quaint, surprising, enchanting, mysterious, even charming, this garden is an extravagant diversion for some, and a dangerous intoxication for others.

1. Strolling. The joys of a garden are in the details. A big picture doesn’t do it. The opening track explores these little intricacies as it works its way in deeper and deeper. At the end, it realizes that it doesn’t know where it is.
2. To the Right. Tracks 2 & 6 start in the same place but go in different directions. The piece actually works its way back to the opening chord several times in the interim, but it’s where it goes in between that is the most interesting.
3. Intermezzo No. 1. What distinguishes this intermezzo is how it proceeds. It uses an idea from Japanese oral poetry called chained verse, where new verses (or in music, phrases) borrow something from the preceding verse (phrase) to create a new idea. This can make for subtle changes or wholesale shifts, depending on the idea and inspiration. The Japanese used to use haiku and other syllabic poetry forms, and would chain them together at parties, with a different person inventing each verse. It would be like taking turns singing improvised verses to “Frankie and Johnny,” and often just as racy.
4. Oven Mitt. All pianists sometimes sound like they forgot to take their gloves off. On this track, it sounds like maybe I forgot to take off an oven mitt.
5. Bluebells. Bluebells chime in a magic garden.
6. To the Left. We return to where we started in Track No. 2, but it’s not the same. Awareness is not sin, but it does take the sheen off a little bit.
7. You Can Never Return. Innocence, like ignorance, may indeed be bliss, but once it is revealed, it can never be reacquired. Paradise Lost is usually more instructive than harmful, however, and there are many other gardens to explore.

This album is a bit softer and gentler than some of my albums, and tends to be rather good-natured. It’s not that innocence doesn’t resort to delusional ranting every once in a while, but that doesn’t happen here. This album was recorded at my home in Phoenix during the fall of 2010.

Of Time and Memories

I’ve always had an interest in time, but now that more of it lies behind me than in front, I’ve come to savor its quirks and subtleties. Though time is often measured in ticks and tocks, it usually passes silently and unnoticed. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” applies to time more than anything else. I’m still not sure I know what I had anyway.

My new solo piano album ponders the nature of both time and memories. I have chosen three silent or nearly silent clocks and three groups of memories, but the album is really about the endless patient passing of time. It seems ironic that this notion, when portrayed properly, is often referred to as “timeless.” Memories, though caught in an ever expanding and receding universe of reality, can seem to be fixed, as if forever yesterday. Though the details can become blurred, they are always emotionally vivid. The truly memorable events are always just beyond our reach. They are like bench players, always ready to substitute for the real players that become increasingly tired or flawed. This duality of how time is and how it is remembered provides the tension for the whole album.

1. Sundial. I can remember the first time I heard of a sundial, growing up in Seattle. “What use is something that only works when it’s sunny?” I thought. Now that I live in Arizona, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much. A sundial only works in the daytime, and it is different every day. That doesn’t make it unreliable; it makes it organic. It is tied to the motions of the earth and stars. Time is real, but it is not mechanical. It is punctuated by overlapping natural cycles, but is it in itself cyclical? Nobody knows.
2. Old Flames. Considering my wife and I are approaching our fortieth wedding anniversary, these memories are very old indeed. Memories are most impactful, however, when they are new, and we always remember our first stirrings of passion. Of course, when we truly allow ourselves to remember, these thoughts are not always pleasant. Embarrassment, conflict, relationships embody more yin and yang than just about anything else. And after all, these are relationships that didn’t last.
3. Hourglass. An hourglass measures a set amount of time. Then it measures it again. And again. It is good for timing a soft-boiled egg, or a Boggle game, or a fluoride rinse. But it is an illusion; there are no little bits of time, just as there are no little bits of space. The Eleventh Century Japanese Zen Monk Dogen had some very interesting things to say about time and cause and effect. He said that when a log burns; there is wood, then fire, then ash. The wood did not cause the fire, and the fire did not cause the ash. They are separate, and yet, all one thing. Time is a dimension, like space. It would be like watching a passing horse through a cardboard tube. First you would see the head, then the body, and then the tail. The head did not “cause” the tail; it is all one thing, but you experience it sequentially.
4. Young Children. Memories of young children bring back oceans of love, joy, wonder, and pride. They also bring back anxiety and fatigue. Young children have boundless energy and are always more resourceful than you think possible. I was wondering why it didn’t occur to me that this would have been a good reason to have my children at a younger age! It was, however, worth every moment!
5. Water Clock. Flowing water has been used to measure time for millennia. Ancient Persians would figure allotments of irrigation water by filling a ceramic vessel with water. As the gates were lifted, the irrigation officer would lift his finger from a small hole in the vessel. When the water had all flowed out, he closed the gate. The Greeks built a more elaborate mechanical water clock, the clepsydra, which measured time using a continuous water source. It had a refillable tank or could be run by a stream. The slow return of water to the sea is also a continuing metaphor for life itself.
6. Old Friends. One of the other realities of aging is that you begin to outlive some of your friends. When I first heard Queen’s song, “Who Wants To Live Forever?” my first reaction was, “Not if it means I have to keep getting older!” At some point we all become memories. The longer I live, the greater the number of memories I acquire and, like an old computer, the smaller the space for new experiences. I’ve always tried to live in the present; certainly this is the healthiest way to be mentally. But I’m not convinced this is how we are programmed to age. Maybe the accumulation of memories gradually makes us more obsolete than wise. I suppose that depends on the society in which you live. At any rate, the memories of old friends, especially those friends who now only exist as memories, are some of the fondest.

I alternate tracks of time with tracks of memories, but really, they mingle freely throughout. And after an entire album of timeless contemplation, the end of the last track finally gives in to tick and tock, and runs down. Though time is silent and seemingly unending, our own lives are measured in breaths and heartbeats.

Released 10/30/2017 SMS Recordings (SMS018) © Copyright 2017 Glenn Stallcop

Turns Out My Improvisation is Composition After All

For nearly two decades now I have been campaigning for the virtues of improvisation. Actually, I have been doing it most of my career, but since 1998 I have been putting my music where my mouth is and turning out albums of solo piano improvisation.

It is important to me that my music is created spontaneously, but for many others, it is of no consequence. Many musicians misunderstand what improvisation is, especially at the compositional level. Even such a creative icon as Miles Davis was quoted as saying he had “no idea” what Keith Jarrett was doing when he performed his solo improvisations. I have heard people say improvisation is “real-time composition” or, one of my favorites, “composition in motion,” but this is not really the case. Many people have said to me, “Well, at some point, all composition is improvisation.” Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Composition is about ideas. It is about the methodical construction of music directly from those ideas, whether the ideas are musical or non-musical. Sometimes the ideas are subtle and seemingly unimportant, sometimes they are the whole point of the music. The ideas can be motivic or harmonic, or they can be philosophical. They can be a self-driven process, or they can follow a script, film, play, or dance. They can be about social comment or be completely introverted. Or they can be all of the above. And all of these ideas guide the choice of musical material, how it is developed, and what happens to it. Emotion and expression come into play, of course, but they are nearly always part of the overall plan. Composers develop musical plans, structural plans, and emotional plans. It is the same with writing a book or creating a movie, it is about “constructing” a work of art. Naturally, there are many moments of inspiration, some of them you never hear, but mostly the process falls into the category of Edison’s “one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

But it also turns out that improvisation is difficult to define and almost impossible to discern. If a musician is not playing from music, he could be playing from memory, or he could be playing by ear. Even if he is improvising, how much of what he is doing is spontaneous and how much is planned or familiar. It is impossible to tell. I’ve heard that Louis Armstrong worked out and practiced his solos in advance. I have played with several jazz soloists who played the same or nearly the same solo every night. I’ve talked with other musicians who have said that even during free-improvisation sets, the group will, over time, revert to those things that have worked before. This was true for me as well when I tried to do free improvisation gigs early in my career. So the only real way to tell whether a performer is improvising and truly creating new music on the spot is to ask him!

Most people consider improvisation to be a technique of performance. Often the standard by which to judge the quality of an improvisation is to decide to what extent the music does not sound improvised. But this means that the improvisation must sound “familiar,” which has a tendency to be rather inhibiting. Many suggest that improvisation is merely “stream of consciousness,” and some I have heard certainly is. But good improvisation is no more stream-of-consciousness than meditation is sleeping. Improvisation takes intense concentration and focus.

Improvisation differs from composition in that it is spontaneous. It is not “about spontaneity” (an idea); it is truly spontaneous. So what difference does that make? Primarily it means that you are listening to an “experience” instead of a presentation. It means that the focus and depth of the music is happening right now, and has not been reflected upon, perfected, and polished. This much is clear enough, but how does that make the music itself different? I had only a partial idea until I started transcribing my improvisations many years ago. Improvisation, indeed, handles the music differently. Instead of the music being “deduced” from another musical idea, it evolves within itself. It uses material that is actually played rather than referring back to material that was chosen beforehand. The focus of the music changes as the music evolves. The improviser “discovers” his or her material, and memory is not always perfect. Ideas, musical or otherwise, are induced and synthesized from the actual music itself. This suggests a different philosophical concept of time, cause and effect, specifics, and abstracts, and it also suggests the idea that change, relation, and juxtaposition is more fundamental than any abstract idea. As a performer, improvisation appeals to me primarily as a vehicle for expression. Music that is conceived in real time is as honest as it gets.

In the sample below, (“Place of the Butterflies”, from my album Night Drift) listen to how each musical phrase draws upon the previous phrase and feeds the one that follows. In Japan, there is a form of oral poetry called “linked verse” in which new stanzas of poetry (such as haiku) are linked to the last stanza in some way.

Though how my music is created is very important to me, it does not mean that I am haphazard or casual about how I treat it. Though every single note is spontaneously conceived, that does not stop me from editing the MIDI files or adapting them to different piano samples. I don’t use the same sounds while recording that I do when I am mastering so I must adapt my MIDI files to the samples and to the response of my keyboard. But I not only edit for my equipment and software, I edit to make sure the music is exactly what I want. I am a composer, and this is my only shot at the material. This has involved me making two (or more) shorter pieces out of one longer one, starting at a more interesting spot than I did originally, or even making cuts within a take (cutting 10 seconds can make a world of difference). Though these techniques are all common in both classical and jazz recordings, I have drawn heat from many improvisation purists for using them. To me, it is not about the performance, it is about the music. But I have finally decided that instead of trying to change the world, maybe I should just try to get people to listen to the music for what it is, and not for how it was conceived. So I no longer am going to call my music improvisation.

The final tipping point in my decision came not from the improvisation or jazz world, but from Classical composition. New Classical Music now readily accepts music that only exists as a recording. Many composers put out recordings with electronics, samples, field recordings or samples from other composers, real world sounds, etc. Some composers write site-specific works, even site-specific operas, and the imagination for what is included in music these days is vast. Improvisation in New Classical Music, with certain limitations, has become rather commonplace. My concern about the acceptability of my piano improvisation within this genre has become almost silly.

I mentioned before that I have transcribed my improvisations and performed them live. I have also transcribed and adapted them for other instruments, including orchestra. At that point, these works can no longer be considered improvisations by any stretch of the imagination. I have also come across other works that have been conceived as strictly for recording but have also since been adapted for live performance. One of my favorites is Steve Reich’s Violin Phase (1967), which was originally done with two tape recorders playing the same violin melody on two slightly different length tape loops, but the piece has been adapted and is now often done live. Here are two versions, one done solo with a computer Steve Reich, Violin Phase (solo violin with computer), and a second done with four solo violins Steve Reich, Violin Phase (four solo violins).

Quail Song

Though I grew up in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle), I have lived nearly my entire adult life in the Desert Southwest (Phoenix), having moved here to play in the Phoenix Symphony at the age of 23. Though it was a bit of a shock at first, I have grown to love the desert landscape, its stark but colorful silk-screen topography, no-nonsense flora and fauna, and Technicolor sunsets. Though you would not guess it at first, the Sonoran Desert is the second most diverse biome on the planet, next to only the Amazon Rain Forest. It is continually surprising and fascinating.

Besides the cloudless skies and bottomless sunlight, one of the most notable characteristics of this part of the world is the birdlife. My first morning here I remember being bolted awake by the cacophony of birdsong that has greeted me every morning since. The number and variety is stunning, and it changes as you go from plain to canyon to mountainside to oasis.

One of my favorites is the Gambel’s Quail. They are almost always in small groups racing through the brush or along your fence, flying only if absolutely necessary and driving my cat nuts. They make many different sounds as they keep track of each other in the vegetation, but their “call”, usually by a solitary male, is a simple plaintive single note. The note droops or sighs slightly as if he is running out of breath. It is very distinctive and lonely. It is the sound of this album.

That single repeating note is a common call throughout these tracks. Though I cannot make a piano sigh, I do try to give it that timeless lonely quality that it has in the early morning or right before dusk. It appears in various contexts, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. But, of course, the album itself is about everything else that is going on: the sprays of color, the dense thickets of chords, the emotional outbreaks, the blankets of calm . . . The quail song is just there to remind you that despite all the waves of volatility, life goes on unaffected.

Morning Song starts with a rather ominous introduction as the sun rises. The song makes its first appearance in call and response fashion with the other sounds of the morning. After another interlude, its call receives a much more desperate response and then the two mingle together as the desert wakes up.

Quail Run is about motion. There is something delightful about watching a quail family race along with a brood of chicks swarming underneath. It is tiny cauldron of boundless energy going in sixteen different directions at once. This track is about running, and parenthood, with an occasional quail song thrown it.

Empty Nest hits me closer to home. It begins with an extended slow, almost chorale-like section before gathering energy and moving on – as we must.

Covey Talk strikes me as rather domestic. There is much back and forth with some joking and some squabbling ending with a serious panic attack. But things settle down at the end as the quail song is heard and everything returns to normal.

Through the Underbrush finds the quail in probably its safest habitat. There is motion but things are more relaxed. The quail song is heard in the distance, and there is a flurry of activity before everything finally settles down for the night.

Left Alone On a Branch. When a quail is singing is just about the only time you ever see one by itself. The question: “Is the quail alone because it is singing?” or “Does the quail sing because it is alone?” I don’t know. Alone is alone; I’m not sure it matters.

Evening Song finds the quail singing accompanied by the colors of sunset, lulling the desert to sleep amid beauty and stillness.

Quail Song is my sixteenth album of solo piano improvisation and was released on July 15, 2017.

 

The Privatization of Music

Music has always been a social phenomenon. It has been essential in organizing groups of people to work, march, fight, or play together. Singing together strengthens the will and binds the faithful. Imagine what it would be like to pull, row, or work together without a concept of a regular beat. Drums and singing have always been a regular component of group activity. Music has arguably been one of the most essential ingredients in the development of human society and civilization. It exists in every known society.

In many societies, the musicians are simply members of the group involved in the activity. But in some societies, musicians have become specialized and professional. Even when performing, though, musicians are still involved in a social activity, even if the event itself (concert or other social activity) has become more formal.

However, recorded music began to change this dynamic somewhat. Though recorded music is still used in social situations (dance clubs and parties, movies, shows and other social activities where it has replaced live music, and also restaurants, supermarkets, elevators, exercise, and even yoga classes), in many other cases, people are listening to music by themselves. Though this is not really a new phenomenon (people have always played and sung music for their own enjoyment), the one-on-one relationship that people have developed with their chosen music has now become more the rule than the exception and is beginning to help change the music itself.

Recorded music eventually supplanted live music as the predominant form of music on the airwaves, first radio and then also television. But even though most people listened to the music in their own homes, it was still something to which everyone had access. It was a social event that was experienced privately. Though radio and TV were optional activities, they were a source of social binding. If you told someone that you did not have a TV or didn’t listen to the radio, you would be treated as if you had had a recent death in the family. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” People had their own record collections, but access to music was still strictly controlled and the records were mass-marketed.

But with the Internet, iPods, smart phones, and exploding choices in cable and satellite TV and Radio, not to mention streaming sources, listening to music has become completely personalized. It is akin to the invention of movable type. Before Gutenberg, only a few people had books (or could read) and so everybody had essentially the same information. Because of this, most people within the society thought the same way. But after the development of printing, people learned to read and had a huge choice of literature. The result was an explosion of individuality because everyone read different books!

Now everybody listens to different music! I first noticed it when my children became teenagers. All of their friends had drastically different tastes in music. This was not the case when I was growing up. Some of their friends liked Broadway or movie music, some liked Classical, some had esoteric ethnic tastes, and popular music, itself, was beginning to divide into the hundreds of “genres” it is today. I remember my daughter telling me that one of her friends had stored five terabytes worth of music from Japanese Anime series! Everybody was “making his or her own taste” as one blogger puts it. My son and his girlfriend had a Y-connector on their ear-buds so they could listen to the same music. It was rather sweet, and very private, but still, I did own some pretty good speakers. Maybe it was good because I rarely had to listen to their music, but I’m a musician and WANTED to hear what they were listening to.

At any rate, this changed dynamic has influenced the way I think about the music I create. When speaking before a large audience, you have to be entertaining, and coherent, and you have to make sure you have something significant to say just to be invited to speak. But when you are in a private conversation, you are more low-key and informal, more personal and intimate, and “big ideas” are not as important as sincerity and the occasional insight. For a creative musician, these changes are huge. Sure, you can listen to a Wagner opera, or a marching band, or dance music, or any other socially derived music alone and be perfectly happy. But to take full advantage of the new dynamics of musical experience the music needs to be personal, not pompous. It needs to be a conversation, not a lecture. It needs to be expressive, not structured. A public building is an architectural monument, while a private conversation may take place at home, on a park bench, around a campfire, or even in bed.

It is a different dynamic between creator/musician and listener. It is closer to the relationship between composer and performer than the traditional relationship between performer and audience. When I play a Chopin nocturne at home, I am entering into a relationship between Chopin and myself. If I perform that nocturne in public, the dynamic is completely different.

For me, the perfect music for this sort of dynamic is individual improvisation. Group improvisation is more social and is more poignant for the improvisers than the audience. A group improvisation is best listened to when an individual hypothetically makes him- or herself a member of the group. But an individual improvisation is intimate, honest, and expressive. It is personal – take it or leave it. Though I have written chamber music, orchestral music and vocal music for many different concert and dramatic settings, I have more recently come to completely embrace this one-to-one dynamic. My solo piano improvisation has now become my major creative activity. It would be difficult for me to return.

 

 

Bridge to Nowhere

I first heard the term “Bridge to Nowhere” during the 2008 US Presidential election in reference to the planned bridge to Gravina Island in Ketchikan, Alaska, but the term has been coined for several bridges around the world. Some other famous examples are in Norway, Kyoto, Japan, and outside Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains. The artwork for this album is from a photo of a derelict bridge that appeared out of the fog on a train ride I took up the White Pass outside of Skagway, Alaska.

I am using “Bridge to Nowhere” as a metaphor for spiritual awakening. The experience is described in the literature of several religions and is characterized by replacing one’s image of oneself (ego) with an acceptance of one’s experience as oneself. It is a realization that we are not separate from the world. It is us, and we are it.

But the experience changes nothing except one’s attitude. Everything is the same. As the Buddhist Ch’ing-yüan puts it:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.

 I can’t say to have ever had this experience myself, but I have always been fascinated by what I have read about it. It is always described as a loss of self, or rather the loss of one’s image of oneself. It is sort of an intellectual and emotional suicide in order to accept the world as it is (or the world as God. depending on your viewpoint). It seems very risky. Mystical Christians have called it the “Dark Night of the Soul.”

My experience and link to understanding is through music. My music is spontaneous yet definitive. I am all the music I have played and experienced, but I also like to challenge myself creatively. It is not the same, but not different. “Not two, not one,” as the Buddhists would say.

The music in this album is more hopeful than hopeless. It is occasionally lonely, and even sometimes ominous, but is more interested in the journey than the outcome. The music is focused and detailed in a meandering sort of way. The world is beautiful, the bridge is beautiful, and nowhere is beautiful. Most of all, music is beautiful.

The tracks for this album were recorded in 2010 at my home in Phoenix, Arizona.

Of the Bells Bells Bells

Of the Bells Bells Bells has a somewhat different and more complex history than most of my albums. For most of my albums, I have used tracks that were recorded at roughly the same time.   Sometimes, they were recorded within a day or two. In the case of Night Drift, they were recorded all on the same night. But for Of the Bells Bells Bells, I took tracks that were recorded more than a year apart.

Clicking on the album cover will take you to CD Baby where you can sample entire tracks.

One of the realities of improvisation is that once it’s played, it’s gone. If something I play is bad, luckily it’s gone; if something I play is good, well, it’s gone too. Good news, bad news. Dealing with this situation is one of the lessons of improvisation, and helps alleviate any stress that might surface about not knowing what you are going to play next. After a while, it becomes pretty easy to keep a low-key attitude, and that leaves me free to relax and play on the edge of my imagination.

However, this all changes when it is time to record. Recording can become quite stressful because I can easily allow a judgmental attitude to creep in and divert my attention from what I am doing. I can’t fool myself; I know it’s not gone. Several years ago, I realized that I couldn’t record something and then go back and listen to it, as it would haunt me when I returned to record again. Unlike a Classical recording, I couldn’t go back and re-record it to play it better. And it’s not really about my playing anyway, it’s about the music. But the temptation is always there.

So I have developed a number of habits that allow me to continue to play recording sessions over the course of a few days or weeks. One of my recording habits is to play when I am not working. I need to be able to devote my full attention to it. My work schedule naturally has holes that I can use for this, but many of them are filled with other activities. So I have found that the least stressful time for me to record is during the summer, as I have about three months off. If I have a week or two during the season sometimes I will go to my cabin where I can be in seclusion, which has also worked, but usually I record in the summer.

I will record for a few days, or even weeks, but only about once a year. Recording is quite exhausting, and after a while I feel “played out.” I don’t listen to my takes for about a year afterward. I don’t want to be able to remember playing them. I need to make a fresh assessment. This is one reason why my albums were recorded a few years before I released them. The process takes some time.

On a whim I googled “five bells” and found a poem of the same name by an Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor

So when I was done editing tracks done in the fall of 2009, I had three good tracks left. In the summer of 2010, instead of recording, I had to work on a commission for an orchestral piece. I usually use an improvisation as the basis for my written pieces, and since I had these three good improvisations left over, I chose one of them as a model the orchestra piece. As I was transcribing and editing the music for the commission, I noticed that two climax points featured five bell-like strokes. On a whim, I googled “Five Bells” and found a poem of the same name by an Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor. The poem discusses time and memory in reference to the death of the poet’s friend. I had already noticed that the end of the piece made a passing reference to Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, so I gave the piece a tentative title, Five Bells (that stuck) and finished the piece with that in mind.

I didn’t get back to improvisation until late that fall with, for reasons mentioned above, mixed results. When I edited the tracks a year or two later, I realized that there were only two tracks of the first few sessions that I thought were worth keeping. Since those two tracks did not have any other good tracks recorded in close proximity, I decided to combine them with the three tracks from 2009.

About the same time, I discovered another poem, “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe, and thought it made a good outline for an album. (I’m not the only composer to think this, Sergei Rachmaninov wrote a choral symphony on a Russian adaptation of the same poem.) Poe wrote the poem about the times in our lives that are punctuated by church bells, other than when the bells are calling the congregation to worship or just keeping time. Three of the four sections deal with moments in individual lives: birth, marriage, and death. The other section deals with the times when bells were used to call the community to action, such as a fire, or flood, or even warfare (as in the 1812 Overture for instance). Poe arranges the sections so that each event is darker than the last, placing the call for action between marriage and death. The bells jingle and tinkle for a birth, while they moan and groan for a death.  I preferred to arrange my album around just the individual life events, so I have transformed Poe’s call to action into something more akin to work or vocation. Also I did not wish to dwell on the darker aspects of aging. Poe wrote the poem near the end of his life and was already infirm. He was already thinking a lot about that last bell.

I wanted to use the improvisation I had used for Five Bells, and work the title and program into the album plan. Poe had given me four stages of life; to that I added “Coming of Age.” The resulting improvisations are: “One Bell” about birth, “Two Bells” about coming of age, “Three Bells” about marriage, “Four Bells” about vocation, and “Five Bells” about death. I tried to choose the improvisation that best represented the subject matter.  The three earlier improvisations from 2009, each roughly ten minutes long, are the first, third, and fifth tracks. The second and fourth tracks, which are shorter, are from 2010.

One of the special features of Poe’s poem is his use of the sounds of his words, including the word “bell” itself, to give the sense of their ringing

One of the special features of Poe’s poem is his use of the sounds of his words, including the word “bell” itself, to give the sense of their ringing. The improvisations include many types of bell sounds themselves, which are a sound that I like and a sound that is very characteristic of the piano.

Of the Bells Bells Bells was released on Jan. 20, 2017, and is my fourteenth album of piano improvisation. It was recorded partly in Phoenix, AZ, and partly in my cabin outside of Ash Fork, AZ.