Program Notes with Score Video 

The idea for Sequences started with two piano improvisations I had made in the Summer of 2012.  I had included them in my piano albums Hold That Thought and Just Add Water.  What got my attention about the improvisations was that they, inadvertently, were derived from the same musical material.  When I would do recorded improvisations, I would do many takes over three to six weeks in the summer.  I had found that it was better if I didn’t listen to the tracks in the midst of these sessions as they would unduly influence what I was doing.  So I often would not listen to them until several months afterward.  I did not catch the relationship between these two tracks until a few years later when I was putting the albums together.  Since the shared material was a slow chromatic turn, often stated in major seconds and treated sequentially, I called the pieces Sequenza No. 1 and No. 2,  with a tongue-in-cheek apology to Luciano Berio.

I had often thought of transcribing these pieces as they were so interrelated, but when I did, early in 2026, they seemed to not be going the way I had envisioned.  After trying many different solutions, I had a vision of the pieces being performed by flute and marimba, which then worked out beautifully.  I started working with Sequenza No. 1 and everything was going fine, but the end of the improvisation included a long section of cluster-like chords which I could not see translating well to the new instrumentation.  Fortunately, I had another improvisation using the same material!  I stitched the two together and was able to devise a very satisfactory ending.  So the two pieces were able to become united in more than just subject matter.

I have written the piece for a five-octave marimba (w/four mallets) but I think, with only a little adjustment, that the piece could be done with a smaller instrument, especially those instruments which include a portion of the fifth octave.  The flute writing makes extended use of the lower register, but with the other instrument being a marimba, I don’t believe there is any likelihood of a balance issue.  The work was written in my home near Ash Fork, AZ, in the spring of 2026.