Program Notes with Score Video 

When I began seriously pursuing my free improvisation at the piano in the early 1990’s, I wanted to create a high-level art that combined compositional standards with improvisational freedom.  Lofty aesthetic goals, indeed.  I soon found that that freedom extended to the nature of the music itself, as well.  I discovered that without strict tonal boundaries, my music could explore several tonal relationships at the same time and my music became quite colorful. It was the rhythmic freedom, however, which gave my music its identity.  Taking the pulse out of my improvisation allowed me to work with multiple time relationships in creative ways, the same way I worked with sound. I developed the goal of wanting to play music that could not have been conceived of in written form. I was literally working from note to note and letting my intuition and experience guide me.

Several years later, after producing several solo piano albums, I decided to try to transcribe some of the tracks.  Because of their amorphous character rhythmically, this turned out to be a difficult task.  I tried many different written approaches to creating not only the music but its note-to-note intuitive character.  After 10 or 15 years, I finally landed on the notational approach which is featured in these two pieces.  Each note is given a real time rhythmic pulse which preserves the original performed values while allowing me to group and phrase the music coherently.  With no coherent pulse or meter, the length of the notes become intuitive.  The strict vices of rhythmic performance are loosened and the music begins to form by itself.

These two pieces, I have always thought made a good pairing. A sleeping dragon and princess make wonderfully contrasting imagery. They are taken from my album, Recovery, released June 25, 2018.   

I have to admit that my vision of a Sleeping Dragon owes a lot to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Smaug, from The Hobbit. The tension of finding a dragon asleep in his lair shifts to utter terror when the dragon shifts his position and rolls over!  Luckily, he is able to get comfortable and doesn’t wake up.

The Sleeping Princess is a completely different sort of discovery. It is magical and fantastic and full of expectation. I have heard it said that if you find a sleeping princess in the woods, whatever you do, don’t kiss her. But our princely hero has unfortunately read too many childhood fairy tales and succumbs to his fantasy.  Our princess, however, is not happy, and rages uncontrollably for a while before becoming tired and falling back asleep.

Sleeping Dragon/Sleeping Princess is written in September of 2025 at my home south of Ash Fork, AZ.