Mainsail

Mainsail is a minimalist piano solo that is played in a torrent of the quick succession of fast-repeating notes predominantly functionally tonal — centered around the key of Bb major. The music features a harmony adjusting to a melody and a melody adjusting to the harmony is always in the background playing, like sails on a mighty boat traversing over a sea of quickly moving notes. The entire piece uses arpeggiated flourishes of an upward and downward gliding undulating propulsive momentum.

High ‘pings’ of sound stick out as guideposts to signal static melodic material that achieves marking time, contrasting with a sub-topography of underlying speeds that vary around each other, and accumulated sounds pile heaping washes of traditional harmonies reminiscent of early French music as flying pitches hold and reinforce the harmonic series of what each layer of overlapping voices echo. Scored across the main center of the piano’s range, this compelling work is thoughtfully evocative and with the highest attention to be owed to allowances in the careful balancing of the hands to ensure maximum clarity to the blurry lines and washes of alluring colors, shimmering textures, and quiet timbres.