WORKS FOR SOLO PIANO
My extensive output for solo piano grows from my own background as a concert pianist, with decades of experience developing and refining mastery in repertoire works. These works fit easily into recital programs and vary widely in terms of style, expressive language, and virtuosity.
Études, Book I (2024)
The three études, out of a projected twelve, that comprise my first book of études follow in the tradition of composers such as Debussy and Ligeti, where the technical challenges are intertwined with compositional explorations. Each is about 3.5–4.5 minutes, depending on tempi.
Étude No. 1: Languid and expressive, the right hand evokes an echo or hazy, distant reflection of the left hand. The effect is achieved through a careful but fluid canon at the 9th/16th, sometimes inverted but always in a 5:6 polyrhythm. Challenges include keeping both voices, with their internal harmonies and countermelodies, shaped and balanced while maintaining the dynamic separation between hands and navigating the rhythmic complexities. Wide leaps and textural extremes characterize the climax, while a soft-spoken coda distills the polyrhythm into a deceptively challenging labyrinth of overlapping voices.
Étude No. 2: Perhaps the most difficult of the three, this étude begins with slow, even, note-against-note counterpoint between the hands. This pattern (or not-quite pattern) reveals itself to be a scaffolding upon which fast lines attach themselves, first with tiny whifs of a note or two to test the waters, gradually building to full-throated runs across the keyboard. Sometimes playful, sometimes fierce, and sometimes in dialogue with each other, they nevertheless cling to the steady scaffold throughout. New arms of scaffold, at a slightly faster tempo, periodically poke through but fail to derail the main action. This étude is fleet, transparent, and fairly unforgiving, as the lines continually reinvent themselves, refusing to settle into repetitive patterns.
Étude No. 3: This is the most traditional of the three, an episodic perpetual-motion study in a fast 7/16 meter. Difficulties including maintaining even trills and similar figures that repeat against the meter while lining them up with interspersed melodic lines, and double-note and rotation challenges that are a bit off the beaten path of piano technique. While there is a volcanic climax and a lot of exciting moments, there are also numerous sections that need to sound still and serene, despite the quantity of notes.
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Poem (2023)
This 5- to 6-minute work was written in a feverish few days to prepare for a last-minute performance opportunity. Evocative, a bit mystical, with hair-trigger emotions, it has a Lisztian sweep with some Scriabinesque harmonies. Effective and virtuosic, but not as pianistically difficult as some of my other works.
Interpolations (2023)
True to its title, Interpolations is one of my very few pieces to incorporate recognizable, existing music from the repertoire. In this case, a fairly obscure (and surprisingly chromatic) Mozart fragment is quoted directly, with a better-known fragment associated with his beloved pet starling interwoven around original material. 5-6 minutes long and less difficult than most of my piano music.
The Subject (2022)
Written for Periapsis Music and Dance and choreographer Evita Zacharioglou, The Subject follows the journey of a creepy and mechanical character who seems to have been created in a lab. In the full dance work, which runs about 11 minutes, my piano score begins several minutes into the piece, following an electronic score by a different composer, and is absorbed into the electronic sound a bit before the end. The piano work on its own lays out a different path but still evokes Evita’s scene throughout. It runs about 6 minutes and is mostly not challenging pianistically.
Ipseities (2020–2021)
The 24 Ipseities were an early pandemic-era exercise in connection. Each work represents a collaboration with a different choreographer, most of whom I had not worked with before. Some took the shape of dance films (as a feasible method of sharing work during the shutdown), some made their way to the stage, and some collaborations were never publicly realized. The pieces vary wildly in style and difficulty as I made the attempt with each one to meet the choreographer where they were artistically and emotionally at that particular moment in time. Eighteen of them were written in 2020 and the remaining six in 2021, and they range from about 3 to about 9 minutes in length, with the full set around two hours of music. They were published in two volumes, and I plan to soon make some available separately as PDFs.
Elle ne m'aime pas (2019)
Originally for piano and singing dancer, this becomes a solo piano work through various ossias. The theatricality of the original, with Hannah Weber’s choreography, had me pouring a glass of wine into the dancer’s mouth with one hand while continuing to play with the other, not to mention an extended silent duet with more acting (and lifting) than I was really prepared for. The first half of the music is a slinky cabaret tango with virtuoso flourishes, and the second half veers into something more emotionally raw and introverted (with nods to the Verdi aria of the same title, from Don Carlos). A massive climax with double trills and cascading thirds gives way to a melting coda, one of my favorite moments of my own music. Without the dance component, the work is around 11 minutes long.
Encaged (2018)
Encaged is a 7- to 8-minute lyrical repertoire piece characterized by unsettling chromatic shifts that keep the direction of the lines fluid. More traditional stylistically and pianistically than many of my other works, it nevertheless has sections that require considerable virtuosity and stamina. Written for Periapsis Music and Dance and a solo collaboration with choreographer/dancer Erin Dillon, the title and emotional idea came from Erin but manifests in the music through a gentle but insistently pulsing rhythm and a haunting coda.
Reflection (2015)
Some fin de siècle virtuoso flair characterizes the improvisatory introduction and waltzy first section of this piece. It breaks off suddently at the climax to reveal a stately passacaglia that warms as it goes. This was originally for Periapsis Music and Dance, a collaboration with guest choreographer Kate Skarpetowska. The version with dance includes a silent prologue, but the music on its own is about 7–8 minutes.
Europa (2015)
Comissioned by Winston Choi with a project grant from New Music USA, this is a large-scale work that imagines the various natural forms of water on Earth as though viewing them as extraterrestrial visitors. Pianistically, it is monstrously difficult, my most challenging work by far. For those up for learning it (myself not included!), it offers primal, vivd images of nature, from the serenenity of a nearly motionless cave to the whirlwind, arbitrary violence of a storm or avalanche. About 17 minutes in one movement.
Trace (2013)
One of my early works for dance, Trace was a collaboration with choreographer Hee Ra Yoo where I wrote music for existing choreography and we ended up meeting in the middle. The work is challenging, requiring the pianist to maintain clear textures and harmonic direction through complex rhythms and flurries of notes. A general air of misterioso pervades, notwithstanding the moments of frenzied waltz. A large hand span is helpful. About 7 minutes long.
Novelette (2012)
Commissioned by Concert Artists Guild for pianist Daria Rabotkina, Novelette operates at a heightened intensity through its fairly short (5–6 minutes) run time. The two hands resemble characters in a story, with the right hand disappearing for a spell. Emotionally volatile and pianistically dense, requires energy and a strong sense of line.
Trichord Preludes, Book I (2009)
This early work of mine was approached as a composition and harmony study as I was developing my technique. Rather than creating preludes on each key, as certain rather famous composers have done to some acclaim, I thought to create preludes on each of the twelve trichords. In each prelude, every note is tied to the expression of one particular trichord, though of course more complex harmonies are created by their layering and overlapping. This first book covered six of the trichords and runs about 15 minutes total; I have yet to write Book II. These works are not too technically demanding overall, and some are quite accessible. The last one has the most emotional depth, but is challenging due to slow 5:7 (and 10:7) polyrhythms.