Musings of a Composer

On July 3rd I had the amazing experience of playing 4 of my Name Music compositions solo on violin (with one duet with my niece Emily), for two outdoor memorial services for two uncles, and aunt, and a cousin, all of whom passed away during the pandemic. It was a magical day in the Catskills of connections from the past strengthened, new connections forged, a new future envisioned. One service was in the middle of the day, held in a wooded glade above the pond my uncle Guido created, by the side of the house he designed. Three were gone from that family -- Gi's wife Liz, and their son Mike, had passed away as well as Guido. In The compositions "Guido" and "Liz" I was evoking their very different characters, and even the way Guido walked in his later years. Liz was full of a Russian folk passion, and featured the oodles of kindness and gentleness that was her hallmark. For Mike I wrote a funky vocal line and a pizzicato, imitation guitar line for the violin, and ...

Sadly, Tim Reppert lost his father Nelson in September, after a period of declining health. Nelson was an amazing man who led a very full life of service and fun in his many roles — as a pastor, as a musician, as a husband, father, grandfather, and friend. He reminded quite a lot of my own father, who died in 1988 in his open-mindedness and curiosity, in the twinkle in his eye, in the firm place music, laughter, and silly fun had in his life.  So I was very consoled by being able to write him a Name Music piece — I recorded both parts (overdubbing myself!) and sent it to Tim. And then I also offered to contribute my violin-playing to the memorial event at Stewart Park in October. Tim put together a jazz band with trombone (Nelson’s instrument), Nate Richardson on guitar, Doug Robinson on upright bass, John White on electric piano, and me.  Nelson loved jazz apparently. However, MY jazz chops are SO rusty! I was in the vocal jazz program at City College back in the early 1980s,...

 In 2020-2021 I composed Name Music pieces for many of the loved ones we’ve lost — aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, parents of friends, nephews and nieces of friends. This has helped me to grieve for them, this focusing in on the qualities they brought to life, and translating those qualities to musical expression.  Yes I’m still using the letters-to-pitches mapping system I devised back in 2000 to inspire the beginning of the melody, but I’ve also been modifying the “rules” as often as I feel drawn to doing, in order to make a melody flow better and be easier to play. Mostly this means using the pitch in a different octave so that it is closer to the other pitches, so I can some of the string crossings (big leaps in melody) and have more step-wise, easy melody. In “Abra” for example, the R is the pitch of E, in the second octave above middle C, (the open E string), but the other pitches are on the low G string, below middle C! So I moved the E down an octave so it is on th...