Duration - 23 minutes.
Unlike my much of my work, this is a piece of music that isn’t about an event or theme in history. Every once in a while, I like to write a piece that captures a mood, crystalizes a moment in time and examines it, looking backwards from it and ahead, trying to slow it down and grasp hold before it drifts away. It was a cool, autumn evening in my neighborhood, with a gentle breeze off the lakefront. There’s more, but I’ll keep it to myself.
I didn’t really set out to write a piano sonata, but when I had finished a movement and decided to call it that, I avoided any classical idioms besides three linked movements.
I wrote the repeated motive, which shows up in various guises throughout the work, in the late 1990’s while I was in high school in my hometown of Morris, Illinois. I think I have the manuscript somewhere, still.
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Movement I (Dance) – c. 7’30”
Movement II (Intermezzo) – c. 6’
Movement III (Benediction) – c. 9’30”