Embers and Ashes [Piano Solo]

Embers and Ashes is a virtuosic piano solo for the advanced pianist that uses impressionistic and aleatoric notation to create an otherworldly atmosphere from which blurred tones and iridescent structures coalesce into suggestively alluring and shimmering colors that freely and fleetingly shift and change course – like sparks of various lengths and densities that fly across the full extent of the piano’s range.

These brightly burning smoldering ashes become more elaborate and increasingly ornamental throughout the various stages of the piece. The overarching development of the work, however, lies in its sparse, harmonically beguiling disparate textures and dynamically subdued aloofness that encroaches in and out of breaths of momentary silence only to spin out in wildly ephemeral musical fragments again through a tumultuous topography of heavy-handed, harmonically-ambiguous texturally beguiling air of carefully prepared, gossamer nuances and compellingly disjointed melodic particles.