Throughout my life I have had a deep interest in many different types of music from all over the world...Classical, folk, popular, jazz....songs as well as purely instrumental. This album features tracks using strong influences from many of these different eras and traditions. "Where Lotus Flowers Bloom" takes one on a journey to the Orient through pentatonic (five note scales) with images of butterflies gliding among Lotus flowers in the water that is glistening in the sun, and with birds chirping overhead. "Meditatione de la Vie" ( 'meditation on life') includes ethereal, mystical moments, contemplative moments, and moments of revelation in the Impressionistic style. "On the Horizon", a lyrical style with rich harmonies with cinematic chord changes, is based on the modal scale from jazz that was popularized by Miles Davis, but used within the Romantic style of the Classical period. "Images" moves poetically through four sections, images, in the Romantic style of the German Classical composers, and includes soothing contemplative parts alternating with cinematic, rapturous expanses. "Rhapsody in D-flat Major" dances up and down the keyboard in rich lyrical harmonies and melodies, using interesting, unexpected chord and key changes to create "ooooooo" moments of surprise, like the dawning the the sun on a beautiful summer morn. "Land of the Midnight Sun", written during the blizzard of December 2006 in Colorado, has a driving, intense rhythm that evokes a brisk wind over the snow-laden landscape via the contemporary use of Baroque counterpoint. "Long Ago on Windswept Steppes" is in the style of a lively Russian folk dance. "A Night in Andalusia" has the piano portraying a duet between the passionate, yearning melody of a Gypsy singer accompanied by the fiery embellishments of a Flamenco guitarist. "On the Costa del Sol", more instrumental in style, imitates the flourishes and passionate, dancing energy of a Flamenco guitarist. Tracks 1, 8, and 9 were improvised live in the recording studio.
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