Personal Culture

There exists what might be called a common narrative, that is to say, a culture of the events of the moment.

Within this cultural narrative are social, political and academic forces, influential in the development of arts and entertainments directed toward establishing and manipulating the public's, and especially the student's, ideas and attitudes.  This is the established milieu of various types of artists.

There also exists, outside these boundaries, an entire universe of experience and expression.

Fire and Frost

One may convey the infinite through understatement.

What can be seen and heard and understood are infinitesimally small in relation to the vastness of reality, and every expression captures but a moment's breath.

The Scent of Water

The most subtle of sounds enhances the most rarefied degrees of perceptivity.

The small things matter, revealing meaning, reviving memory, and elevating imagination.

Context, Meaning, Aural Impressions

Sonic images, like the visual, are symbolic of emotions, ideas, and the spiritual.

Properly understood, listening and hearing convey the vision of the composer, directly and through implication, to the experience of the listener.

Artificial Creativity

To dismiss the artist and deny tradition is the end of culture.

Advanced technology does not endow one with vision and imagination, but with ways and means, for individuality is indispensable, and works of greatness, the achievements of free will and moral reason, come from no other source, as history proves time and again.

Curiosity and Expression

Manipulated experimentally, sound imagery produces diverse results.

It is the artist who must determine aesthetic value in composition and design. Some experimental sounds will be no more than noise, while others yield the elevated and beautiful.

Simply put, one chooses accordingly.

Authenticity

Fidelity is the difference between passion and perceptivity.

Subtlety in sound conveys what extravagance and sheer volume can not.

In Hearing of the Unseen World

At the intersection of life and art is mystery.

Consciousness grasps, and realization measures what can be known against what remains unknown.

Symmetry

Order, proportion, balance.

But these alone are simply appearances, and may be no more than easily contrived artificialities; the aesthetic sensibilities are engaged and expand through myriad perspectives, direct perceptions, and appreciation of imperfection as well.

Message

Every work of art is a communication.

It says, "This is reality, this is the world, this is a story about life and experience."

Advance

The unorthodox envisions progress, yet requires risk.

Whether in theory, approach, or execution, advancement of creative thought through unconventional means may ultimately yield value and significance, but for the artist, the work is its own justification.

Cynosure of Sounds

Chaos to order, and again to chaos, to order, ad infinitum.

Perceived differently: a fabric woven of being and becoming, reality of continuous change.

Ease and Difficulty

Art engages subjective emotion as well as objective perception.

The percipient forms impressions and responds accordingly.  The artist, nonetheless, may choose to gratify the aesthetic temperament of an audience, seek to shock the sensibilities of another, or remain indifferent to anything other than the art itself.

The Depths Beneath the Surfaces

Perceptions must be more than the equivalent of a cursory glance, a brief awareness.

Hearing, one absorbs atmospheres; listening, one interprets and understands.  These are different levels of consciousness than those of moving to rhythms and nodding to beats.

But the way of the sounds, and of their intent, must be different as well.

Cycles and Permutations

Both order and change suggest meanings that may be sensed, if not fully understood.

Things rise and fall.  Change will occur.  The concrete, impermanent and material reflect the ideal, the permanent and abstract.  The artist perceives and represents the moment of experience, and the old becomes the new.

Entity, Abstraction, Existence

Poetic works combine elements of language in constructions of verbal imagery.

As a composer, I am concerned with tones and their juxtapositions, the atmospheric imagery of real environments, and, like certain poets, with the depiction of visions and realities not perceptible by the senses.

Expression, its Dynamics, and the Unexpected

There are those who would govern culture, control its expressions, dictate its directions and outcomes.

They are nameless and many, but such perspectives are ultimately absurd, Utopian, and impotent in the context of reality. What cannot be predicted cannot be controlled over time.

For the artist, it is simple, and cannot be otherwise:  Do what must be done.

Into the Valley

The excesses of musical creativity and performance are easily forgiven in light of the emotional intensity the arts of sound bring to bear upon creator and audience alike.

Left unchecked, such creative impulses may nonetheless drive the artist into grievous error, and the foundations of celebrity subcultures have little in the way of sustaining the spiritual faculties necessary to avoid shallow and absurd commitments to base, often brute perspectives.  One attains the genuine heights without, or in spite of, mere appearances and the welter of human ignorance, even in its most refined forms.

Facing the existential realities, one understands the meaning and purposes of art, considers, and acts accordingly, or falsely, if the understanding is false.  And it was ever thus.

The Furthest Reach

The nature of art has long been considered one of spiritual expression.

For the composer, like any other artist for whom this tradition holds, sound is a material reflection of the greater ideals, and the creative act is a leap of faith.

To Be Free

The fog of noise in daily life may go unnoticed in the course of work and play, but it is no less oppressive.

Freedom is a responsibility that demands individual choice and action, if it is to be experienced at all. Society, politics, and culture play numerous and critical roles in the exercise of free will and human reason, but the contemplative and meditative have a crucial place as well.

Thus the impetus and purpose for these compositions and recordings.