"How the hell did you do that?!?"

This picture.

That’s me hugging Jeff LaDeur after the premiere performance of Seventeen Minutes and Twenty-Two Seconds, whispering ecstatically: “How the hell did you do that?!? How the hell did you do that?!?“

I’m spoiled; I work with amazing artists who are as kind as they are talented. I’m used to exceptional performances of my works in environments that are filled with support.

But this was different.

Seventeen Minutes is a piano work I’ve been obsessed with for the past two years (two years!!). It’s a piece I couldn’t stop writing: so what was envisioned as a one-movement, under ten-minute work somehow grew into a three-movement, 24-minute tour de force.

I really had no business writing music so far beyond the point I should have finished the piece (a story for another time). But dissatisfaction can be helpful - to write for such a momentous occasion before it gets picked up by a consortium of 20-plus pianists, you really need to get it right.

So how to create a work to commemorate the 300th Anniversary of a piece that literally every pianist with even a hint of a formal music education is already familiar with?

Well, you can’t out-Bach, Bach. Writing a polyphonic piece that sounds like a cheap knock off is lazy and doesn’t help anyone. This is especially true if you are also inspired by a diverse selection of musical influences across classical and jazz genres that span centuries of music making. I suppose for a pianist and working musician the question becomes, how do you write a work that attempts to address the singular obsession of your life?

……

That’s me in the picture, checkered pants and all. The young would-be prodigy seated at the piano. Lord of the Manor, proudly scanning the stickers on my John Thompson lesson book first used by my mom in the 1940s and re-purposed for my benefit in our late 1970s wood paneling living room. If this picture had audio, there’s a good chance you’d hear bits of Donna Summer or The Knack singing My Sharona.

I was good but not obnoxiously good, the kid that aced his pieces with not too much effort. Years later when I discovered the meat of the repertoire, things slowed down as I came into contact with works that required a super human effort. These pieces fascinated me to no end – who could conceive of such works? Where did they come from and how could they possibly be written? I didn’t know where to start, so in truth I didn’t. Performing was the thing, that and an obsessive fascination with literature of all kinds. It would be years later, my 20s in fact, when I would make my first real foray into writing music (via literature and writing poetry) but even then, it was as a hobbyist and with a sense of play with a small group of like-minded Bohemians.

It stuck.

Would the kid in the checkered pants listening to Casey Kasem‘s American Top 40 ever have imagined himself on stage hugging the performer after the premiere of his own personal Liszt/Ives/Barber Sonata? Not a chance. I’m not sure even my 20-year old self could imagine that. It didn’t fit the narrative, it didn’t fit the trajectory (as if I even knew what that was).

Scan back to the first picture at the top, and there I am right in the middle of life coming full circle. It’s a celebration, me surrounded by friends and all things piano with a dumbfounded ‘How’d that just happen?’ echoing through my brain as memories raced back to images of my younger self playing the small piano in my Central California suburban track house. I had no clue what was coming next, just as I have no clue what’s coming next now. I’ve grown comfortable with this feeling of not knowing.

And that’s part of the magic.