Six Canaries

Six Canaries is a solo piano composition written in six separate and brief movements, each movement lasting less than one minute in duration. The six subtitles reference a different variety of canary (or “songbird”) although each miniature is not meant to purely replicate or imitate the bird-song or native sounds of each species of the common bird. Instead, this piece cohesively relies on using that idea as a springboard for creating an entirely imaginative new set of pianistically idiomatic and yet ‘orchestrally’ based sound world loosely based on that alluringly cacophonic and aleatoric music in this fixed notational composition.

Dissonant, suspenseful scoring cast dark, blurry, and ephemeral, fleeting flights of highly ornamental and virtuosic gestures that run amok in compelling threads of brightly colorful jagged and hauntingly beautiful atmospheric tones and passages of disjointed rhythmic complexity. Rapid crossing hands exchange penetrating and pulsing thundering in the bulk of the work as resultant, clangorous chimes and infused arpeggiating filigree envelope the distinctive landscape wringing every conceivable ricocheting and tumultuously cascading runs imaginable.

Staunchly pervasive contrapuntal themes and underlying and intertwining voices exchanging between hands, cast further luster in breaking the relentless drive of the work towards impressionism and firmly to successive motifs of inspired and marvelously luxuriant tonal and non-tonal worlds pulsing with undertones of foreboding. The music reflects and underscores the musical idiom and its evolutionary ride completely.

As movements progress, gone are the arching harmonies and generous melodies that pervade sections of the piece, and the music becomes drained, more angular and frighteningly poignant – breathtaking in its craft, the score shocks, seethes, and subtly comments on a richly hued topography that is discernible and entertaining rather than perfume. It is visceral, thickly layered, and well-characterized with vivid theatrical, high-powered moments of contrasting feelings of the diverse movements.

SIX MOVEMENTS

1.) Norwich; 2.) Black-headed; 3.) Parisian-frilled; 4.) Stafford; 5.) Crested; 6.) Yorkshire