Gargoyles

Gargoyles is a short, dramatic piano solo played in a torrent of fury and heavy-handed, dense, low chords. The grisly simplicity, morbid vigor, and macabre vision are not all that unlike that of rock music, which this piece not only bothers its title from literal rock, but also in its banality and sheer barbaric thrust.

Repetitive ostinatos in the left hand drive the pulse of the work as the right-hand shifts below and above the left, creating an animated and exciting series of seemingly disparate threads punctuations that make an overarching extraordinary tapestry from snippets of jostling rhythms and jagged asymmetrical phrases.

This work features a steady rhythm from which discordant intervals and figures of strains of musical material that coalesce as the composition come to a tumultuous and distorted yet easily identifiable metamorphosis of corresponding stability, instability, and dissonance. It ultimately forms a unified and coherent work of satisfying length that avoids confusion and relies upon the concerns of tumbling strains of ever-increasing propulsive motors and interspersed sparks of color and dynamic low, dark and heavy timbres. It is as impressive as it is fun to play — compelling in aggressiveness and invigorating in its savageness.