When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. ~ Rumi This is one of a series of video art collaborations I have created with Tracee Vetting Wolf. (Check out her video channel.) In most of them, she mesmerizes us with her paintbrush and the colors that swirl …
I’ve been involved with a few musical theatre shows around my new home in Ithaca, New York, for the past few months. I’m learning a lot. Most of what I’m learning is about me. And I think I’m not alone… @muz4now I’d rather have a song in my #heart than a worm in my ear. …
Participants in #Quest2015 wrote, painted, and played about our sacred joy. Though I could never cover all of the wonderful responses, here are a few: Kate Arms (Roberts) Molly Morrissey Mark Horn Lauren McLean Ayer Tracee Vetting Wolf shared a doodling for joy video and I wrote a blog complete with child-like doodles. And then we …
“Why prefer blue skies over grey? Because you can sing and play the blues.” ~ Stan Stewart After the opening, at times disjointed part one of Cracked Open Blues comes this very bluesy improv. If you start to dance, be ready for some changes in the count (time signature)! This spontaneous composition bounces around from …
Digging Through Blues After digging into the recordings from the Painting Piano series of improvisations, I’ve found a few more tracks that are interesting, but did not make the cut for the album. One of my favorites so far, is “Cracked Open Blues”. Because the improvisation is so long, I’ve split it into a parts one …
Thanks to everyone who is helping to make “Painting Piano” my best-selling album ever! I’ve chosen to include several of the piano improvisations and paintings from “Painting Piano” throughout this post. I’ve also linked (near the end of this post) the videos related to this project from YouTube. I hope you enjoy them. What do …
Life and Thoughts Creating Reality Though I believe in the power of thought and know that we create our own reality, it’s easy to experience things as “life” giving us this lesson or that curve ball. Hopefully, most adults have ways of coping with these moments: yours might be taking a deep breath, going for …
This is the third of three piano improvs from May 1, 2014. First, there was “Early (Part 1)“. In it you’ll hear predictable sounds and very stylistic, yet still spontaneously created, themes. Next, there was the student-inspired “Mouse and Elephant” with it’s dissonant chase across the keyboard. The final piano improv from this May Day session …
When I was teaching piano lessons in Pennsylvania, I had a student who was a truly inspired young lad. In addition to being a good learner, passionate about music, and with a very creative mind, he enjoyed our explorations into improvisation. So, we did duet piano improv together. My memories of it are sweet and …
Yesterday, I sat down for the first time in many days and improvised on the piano. You see: piano improv is often the clearest way I can voice what’s inside of me. Certainly this was true last night. I played for a couple of hours and — in spite of some technical learning curve — …
