NCTRN (2014)

solo piano

13 minutes

for Richard Valitutto

commissioned by Pianospheres

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Program Note:

This piece is an exploration of Richard’s beautifully delicate touch and his ability to voice dense chords with clarity and direction.  I was initially worried about composing a new piano solo only two years after composing Lullaby 2, but the prospect of engaging in a project like this with Richard was too attractive to ignore.  A central interest for me in this piece was to articulate my fascination with the way changes in resonance alter our perception of material.  My experiments in resonance with this piece include muting strings to varying degrees and attacking those muted pitches in different ways with and without the pedal, re-voicing the same or similar pitch collections and barely-audibly re-articulating single voices within dense chords, and use of the damper pedal in several gradients.