"December" is the second of two "Promenades" for solo piano. The performance is by Xak Bjerken on a concert of pieces ala Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". This and its companion piece, "October" acted as pillars or interludes for the overall performance.

The set is dedicated to my former teacher, composer Stephen Dembski.

Long Path was written for my dear friend Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu for the occasion her final concert as a student at the Eastman School of Music.

The piece begins with a reading of the poem of the same title by its author, Fang-Tsu's mother, the much-admired Mongolian poet and painter Muren Hsi (b. 1943). What follows, in hesitant steps, is a musical journey through a recollected moment long since past. It is music of transference and transfiguration, music of memory, renewal, and of acceptance. Here too, a daughter must retrace a mother's "indelible footprints".

Birches for viola and electronic sounds was written as a response to the poem of the same title by the great American poet, Robert Frost. My intent was not to "set" the poem, but rather to explore its inner workings -- to re-imagine its parentheticals, present in Frost's vicarious vision of a boy, a scene of birches, and the truth of the matter versus the 'truth' as revealed in the confession of an old man looking back.

Birches is dedicated to my father and was composed for John Graham.

The piece has been performed dozens of times by numerous performers, most recently by Graham himself on his May 2004 China tour (Beijing, Wuhan, Xiamen, Hing Kong), at the Weisman Art Museum in Minnesota, and at the Aspen Summer Music Festival.

To Be Neither Proud Nor Ashamed was composed for saxophonist Randall Hall whose musicality and technique were central to its conception and realization. The piece combines strictly notated music with highly improvisatory passages and an electronic backdrop of sounds recorded in extreme proximity to the instrument (keys, airflow/blowing, spitting, tonguing the reed, etc).

The title comes from Cecil Forsyth's portrayal of the saxophone as having no history of which to be proud or ashamed.

The piece is available on the CD of the same title on Innova records.

See also the PureData performance patch.

Score attached.