Album Notes

These are selections from all of my other albums (except selections from Deepening, which will come in a future album). As I noted previously, Improvising is composing, only there’s no time to stop and polish. My aim has been to create music that has structure—at least a beginning (sometimes the searching part is left in), a middle, and a conclusion — and that can sometimes touch something deeper. Within this structure there may be many themes that play off one another and interweave. Most of these works come into being the way a plant grows, the full blossoming, which may be quiet, usually coming near the end.

Almost none contain edits. I determine only where to begin and where to fade out. Some, like "Two Cranes Celebrate Their Lives Together," seem complete stories; some, like "The Lead Crane Knows He Will Die after This Migration," seem to correspond to heightened moments in a life; some are just plain uncanny like "The Transformation of a Chrysalis"; some are like praises ("To Emily Dickinson...") and some are like elegies ("A Boy Going Off to War...").

But it's music. I never consider words when improvising. The titles all come afterward, though for me some are uncannily corresponding. Of course, theses are just my associations. The following quote is a precise description of how I approach this work:

“When I’m no longer trying to do something, I begin to feel I am led, as if my brush was just following a definite path. I am just following something which I merely initiated. At that point I am open to something which I was unable to express before, when I wanted to direct it. And strangely enough, the best moment, and the best result, is when I am here in front of the painting, and the hand is so to speak free. I am not imposing. At the same time it is me who paints. But it is as if I were following a kind of secret indication. I am no longer fighting. The struggle has taken place before this moment, when I was at the point of giving up. And at that point if I’m open enough, then something occurs, something completely new, something which seems to be true.”
from "The Transmission of Content, An Interview with Paul Reynard," Parabola, Vol. 13.1.1998.

Recordings were made on an old upright with an old microphone. For these piano improvisations, “imperfections” lend a sense of place, of actually being present at the time.