Emptiness Dances

15 Songs for Solo Piano

Digital Release November 11, 2009

Inspired by the untimely death of a dear friend of mine, this piece conveys all the intensity of real friendship, from great engagement to quiet sharing to the pain of loss and the nostalgia of memory.

This is a Sanskrit word meaning “The Place of Great Truth”. That place is always within the very heart of your beingness and can never be lost. Look for it there.

A playful and varied interpretation of the famous Zen koan “What did you look like before your parents were born?” Your original face is that which you actually are, stripped bare of all pretense and psychological programming.

Some things require no explanation and, in fact, it will only detract from them. Listen with your heart and your body and let the mind be quiet.

The title track of the album expresses my lifelong fascination with the fact that music seems to appear out of nowhere. It literally arises out of nothingness. Although I have tried to identify a source many, many times (God, source energy, the universe, my brain) I eventually concluded that it is and always will remain a sweet mystery.

This piece attempts to captures the essence of me. Capturing the essence of a person, any person is of course, impossible. Still some things do seem to get closer to the roots than others. The wonder of music is that it can be more accurate than any mirror. For while the mirror on your wall reflects your face, music reflects your soul.

Powerful, fast, compelling this piece is a picture of the power of nature, It is filled with awe, respect and even a few notes of whimsy. While in our ignorance we see nature as something separate from us, something to be controlled and exploited, it is in fact the essence of us. We are it! Where does nature end and we begin? There is no such point.

When this theme appeared to me I was moved by its utter nostalgia and it made me think of all those people who have left their homeland to seek a better life elsewhere. There is always a piece of your heart that remains in the place of your birth and no amount of “better life” will entirely expunge it.

Since now is the only place we ever are anyway this phrase is far more powerful than one might think. This piece wants you to just let things be as they are, if only for this moment. And that surrender, passive and without resistance, just might be enough to change an entire life, forever.

This was inspired by a visit to London and the English countryside. The name is imaginary but, as does the piece itself, it conjures up images of a quiet yet vital neighborhood, filled with shops, houses, streets with people moving toward their small and large goals, children, lovers... and now you.

Mabu is my wife's nickname and this is a picture of her. She is far too diverse and dynamic to capture in a single picture in sound. Still it is a moment, a snapshot, a photo in the book of our life together.

There is a remarkably beautiful and charming area of northern Wisconsin, surrounded on three sides by Lake Michigan, called Door County. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a Thanksgiving weekend there many years ago and I captured that experience for my life's scrapbook of sounds.

Everyone comes into the world with a legacy, some leftovers from the deep past, some unresolved issues, some unforgiven sin, real or imagined. This piece starts slowly, openly acknowledging that seeming burden. Then in a moment of intuition and grace that very same energy is transformed into a victorious release of energy. Then the next level of life is attained, freedom

Though the various events, positive and negative, in one's life an identity is formed. We are not born with one, it is created as a reaction. So an identity is not who we actually are. It is just who we appear to be. This piece explores the wonder of living without a fixed identity, of living with the breathtaking freedom of total choice. And with total choice I could take any form I wanted in the moment. Who then am I if I can assume any form? No one in particular.

I recently saw a documentary about the shrinking of the polar ice caps and the devastating effect it is having on the wildlife there. I had to wonder what our lives, as humans, would be like, if our animal brothers and sisters were no longer with us.