Night Sea Nocturnes

Night Sea Nocturnes is a deftly written three-movement work for piano solo specifically inspired by the Pacific Ocean while living in Los Angeles). This triptych evoking the quiet, undulating ebb and flow of the tide is among one of the most deftly characterized pieces of surging energy, dissonant vivacity, and airy open-chord expanse. Handsomely written for solo piano which utilizes the full extent across the piano’s range, it contains a strong American consciousness, opening with clear representational imagery with billowing arpeggiations from call-and-response patterns across both hands, but then morphs into abstract sketches with the second and third movements with descending lines and rhythmic complex fragments, often containing luminous and lyrical assertions of a passionate, expressive temperature steadily rising and falling until, without a break, the third, low, densely scored movement brings a sustained rhythmic intricacy from its subtle background shadings as the instrument plays against and within the web of slow-moving harmonic control.

Figures are rotated and unfold to develop in high atmospheric realms (as in the second movement) and also with both hands together, playing entirely different registers and characters. The music of Night Sea Nocturnes progressively permeates across biting and disjointed scherzo-like surprises of haunting exuberance in its thematic statements that are almost diatonic, but distinctively unique, at once contemplative and confident.