Evolve: a multimodal performance of music and art

The evolution of creation…

Evolve is a multimodal project of six original compositions and 24 paintings meant to tell the story of my own evolution as a musician and person over the past 10 years.  I hope you will enjoy listening and that my music and art might speak to you.

 The Music  

1. Walter/Elegy. I composed “Walter” in 2011 inspired by Mississippi artist Walter Anderson (1903-1965). The music came to me while I was away from a piano and I recorded this piece with Stephen McNeill for our band Other Stories. An elegy is a poem of serious reflection and though this piece has no lyrical backdrop, it was recorded and composed almost by accident in a moment of deep contemplation where I had been exploring the idea of major and minor sounds coexisting to create something ethereal. Both of these pieces were composed in Mississippi when my children were younger and time to make and perform music was scarce. 

2.  Bharat Mein. In 2016, I moved to India where I absorbed the marvelous and mysterious sounds of Indian music. I began to work with renowned guitarist Susmit Sen (founder of global Indo-fusion rock band Indian Ocean), who taught me the value of the tension notes—of waiting for resolution to build emotion and climax for the listener.  In December 2019 I returned to the US and recorded this piece that was inspired by the scale used in one of Susmit’s old compositions, “From the Ruins.”  We had been rehearsing Ruins and thinking about re-envisioning it to include the piano when I began to play around with the scale.  Bharat Mein means “In India” in Hindi and though this piece was recorded originally in my hometown of Hattiesburg, MS, it is every bit reflective of my time in India.

3.  Lamento d’amore. Some music takes time to simmer and stew before it is fully realized. This composition started with a G minor exploration while I was living in India. I dragged my digital piano to the back bedroom of our house and I would play in that room while looking out the window at the birds.  I recorded one iteration of this piece during the same recording session as Bharat Mein in Hattiesburg, MS.  However, I really wanted to develop the longing, sad section, but it would not come to fruition until earlier this year. As part of coursework for Dr. Randall Everett Allsup's class, we studied Monteverdi’s Renaissance classic:  “Lamento della Ninfa.”  The lament of the nymph has a haunting melody and it instantly reminded me of this composition.  Recently I presented this piece recorded with the tabla, played by Nandit Desai, as original music for use during the Spring 2021 Convocation service for Teachers College, Columbia University.

4.  Fury. In February 2020, just prior to the world shutting down as a result of the pandemic, I had the opportunity to play a Baldwin piano in the cavernous historic sanctuary of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in downtown Albany, New York.  I had not touched a piano for creative or cathartic purposes in many months and had generally avoided playing. That day, that moment in time, led to a fury of emotion in an aggressive, percussive expression of everything negative I had faced and felt during a time of personal upheaval. 

5.  Yatra. Yatra means journey in Hindi. This composition emerged last fall (2020) as the result of a semester-long project to get reacquainted with our primary instruments in a meditative way, allowing music and sound to be discovered organically.  This piece is a musical journey meant to capture what goes on in my mind when I’m at the piano.  Memories, thoughts, feelings, emotions—everything that I’ve experienced so far in my life seemed to come out as a result of this meditative project. 

6.  Outro. I have been working with five wonderful musicians (Jose Fernando, Louise Carrozza, Yuer Deng, Marilyn Dizon, and Jeff Ostermueller) since January in a collaborative endeavor to create five songs which convey who we are as a group both personally and musically. In one of the tracks, our task was to develop an ostinato bass and build upon it.  I created an outro for that particular track that I really enjoyed so I developed it into this composition.

The Art

I attempted to translate music into expressive paintings.  I wanted to convey the rhythms, movement, dynamics, modes and emotions of six original compositions.  Colors were chosen based on elements of the music such as the desired mood, compositional content, or background of each piece. Each row represents the evolution of one piece of music.