Uncaged

Video of the 2020 premiere performance by pianist Amy Wurtz, on Access Contemporary Music’s Inner Worlds concert in Chicago.

 UnCaged is played entirely inside the piano. The title describes a sense of liberation, and also includes my teacher, John Cage’s name, referencing Marcel Duchamp (one of Cage’s heroes) and his brilliant use of puns. The duration of the piece is up to the performer, from a minimum of five minutes to infinity.

Waterworld

Video of the premiere performance at DROM NYC with jazz trombonist Dick Griffin.

Waterworld is a “deconstruction” of the Aquarium movement from Carnival of the Animals for piano, trombone and electronic tape.  The tape portion is fixed but the piano and trombone parts are freely improvised.

Don Bachardy Paints a Portrait

For flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello
From Synesthesia/Fusion: 3 Painters Portrayed

The Amalgama Ensemble conducted by Carl Bettendorf.

All paintings by Don Bachardy

Photos by Calvin Brodie, Michael Childers, Paul Jasmin, Jack Shear and Wayne Shimabukuro. Used by permission.

Synesthesia/Fusion: Three Painters Portrayed are musical portraits of my friends, the painters Mark Kostabi, Darragh Park and Don Bachardy. The piece is also available in a version for solo piano.

Debussy famously spoke of seeing music in color, a kind of synesthesia, and this was my goal in these musical portraits: exploring the mystical connection between sound and visual form—and it’s led me to a very new way of using harmony in my music. It’s also inspired me to try and create a feeling for those mysterious, almost unknowable realms that are so powerfully explored in all of their paintings.

Don Bachardy painted my portrait at his Santa Monica studio, and my musical portrait is based on that extraordinary experience. For well over an hour, you sit as still as you can; he looks up at you, then down at his canvas, sometimes looking up and down quickly, sometimes more slowly—it’s as if you’re having a profound, completely wordless, conversation. You sit looking out at the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains; that landscape is present in the music. Beautiful portraits of his life-partner, Christopher Isherwood, hang on the studio walls–they lived together in this house for over thirty years, and I felt Isherwood’s presence very strongly when I sat for Don. He’s somehow also there in the music.

Piano Sonata number two by Tui St. George Tucker

Performed by pianist Roger Tréfousse as part of a live broadcast of Relevant Tones from Lincoln Center. The concert was called Vanishing City and featured a panel discussion and performances of music by Tui St. George Tucker, Arthur Russell, Ben Weber and Julius Eastman.