Search - Jeffrey Goodman :: The Unbearable Jazziness of Being: Music for Two, Three and Four Pianos

1. Northern Lights. Over many centuries some observers of the aurora have reported hearing mysterious sounds during the flashing displays. Northern Lights is, in part, a contemplation of the question,;If there is music in light, is there perhaps light in music? 2. Behind the Waterfall. H. H. The Dalai Lama told American mountaineer Ian Baker about a wall painting in his private meditation chamber in Tibet that had a mural showing a yogi meditating in front of a waterfall with a tunnel leading behind it as if into another realm. This movement beckons the listener to take a musical journey to a hidden realm behind the waterfall.3. Romance of Andalucia. Flamenco guitars strumming wild rasgueados, gypsies, castanets, dancers and singers gather for an evocation of the spirit of flamenco music. Here the two pianos revel in memories of the fields in which the flamenco flowers still grow.4. Catalonian Daydream. This is, perhaps, a musical reverie of a sultry summer evening in Catalonia, more than a century ago, by the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, where two lovers meet for the first time.5. Journey to Stonehenge. Celtic rhythms, ancient themes, modal harmonies, and changing meters are woven together to take the listener into a kind of musical ring of stones. 6. With Jewelled Tears. Some spiritual traditions hold that underlying all human suffering is a kind of limitless and all-encompassing compassion that embraces and sustains life. With Jewelled Tears is a canonic double of a sarabande-like melody that remains hidden within the source material of the canon. 7. Indra's Net I: Sojourn of the Four Rivers.Indra's Net is a metaphor developed by Indian and Chinese Buddhism dating back to at least the 3rd century. Throughout the universe there is said to be a wonderful net that stretches to infinity in all dimensions of the universe. In each and every eye of the net is a single iridescent jewel. If one looks into any one of these jewels, one will see all the other jewels of the universal net reflected within. Sojourn of the Four Rivers takes this concept to the level of musical structure. Each piano plays exactly the same source material as the other pianos. Yet each of the pianos assumes the character of a unique piano-river of sound. The rivers start as slow moving, meandering streams of notes. They gradually meet and begin to converge. Upon meeting, the four piano-rivers at first clash, each ardently clinging to its identity. At last over time they fully merge and in so joining together become a broad cascading river. 8. Indra's Net II: Deluge of the Four Rivers. Indra's Net II is a highly embellished double of Indra's Net I, with the four rivers of music rapidly merging and then cresting into a kind of primordial sonic flood.9. Sakura, Sakura. This piece is for three players: one player for the first piano, and two players playing the second piano. Sakura whose translation in English is Blooming Cherry Blossoms is a famous ancient Japanese folk melody. Sakura became associated in the Edo period of the 18th century with the metaphysical concept of mono no aware: the fragile delicacy of the cherry blossoms, their extreme beauty and quick death became a kind of metaphor for the ephemeral nature of human life. Our musical setting seeks to evoke all these associations of life, its transience and the bittersweet sadness at its passing. 10. The Unbearable Jazziness of Being. This piece is a kind of after-hours battle of the jazz bands. Two ensembles are trying to outdo and outplay each other. There are a series of expositions, interruptions, and escalations. The marimbaphone acts as a kind of arbiter of the vying groups. A full description of the this music and free down-loadable tracks are available at our website ShelterofClearLight.