Traffic Waltz

Traffic Waltz is a minimalist work featuring a slowly moving harmonic progression that explores modality and asymmetrical structures in a substantial nearly fifteen-minute piano solo. Based on a repetitive cell structure, the desire to move away from conventional techniques of minimalist is noticeable.

Set in A minor, the composition slowly dissolves its usual progressions throughout a mixture of shifting phrases and meters, alternating between spaces within which high melodic bell-like tones signal the amount of time spent between shortening and expanding contrasting harmonies and sometimes rapidly shifting modes. Both the left and right hands pronounce broken chord outlines in a two-handed interlocking pattern that spins a beguiling and timelessness to the vacillating currents of notes that stream by in blurry shades of contrasting colors. The title was conceived as this music was written on across a large swath of time in traffic gridlock during winter in Los Angeles.