Sending love and light to all of you in these difficult times, and especially to my parents. A Foretaste is the final etude in my upcoming Polyrhythms for Pianists book. It features a 5:4 polyrhythm, and is based on an F harmonic major scale with some excursions to F minor.
Undeserving cuts both ways. George Floyd didn't deserve to be murdered by the police.
Breonna Taylor didn't deserve to have her home broken into and to be shot to death by the police.
Elijah McClain didn't deserve to be put in a carotid chokehold and injected with ketamine and have his life cut short by police. The police don't deserve the power to harass and murder Black people with impunity.
What hurts others hurts us all. What lifts others up lifts us all up. Black Lives Matter.
I have deep respect for Joshua Trinidad and his music, and I'm excited to share this collaboration. Isolation features non-retrogradable/palindromic rhythms in the right hand of the piano part. The outer sections are in 5/4, and the middle section is in 9/8, in case you like to know such things.
Distant Bells is the first piece from my upcoming book, Polyrhythms for Pianists. The book has improvisation suggestions, instructional pages on how to play various polyrhythms, and 13 polyrhythmic etudes. Distant Bells is written in a way that makes 2 against 3 easy to play, and is in Phrygian mode.
Swirling features a 3 against 5 polyrhythm.
"To paraphrase the great poet Dante, the heavens swirl above us
and our eyes are still cast to the ground." ~Vanna Bonta