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I'm happy to say that the music galleries have grown so large, I've had to split them up into
three different pages. This is the page for Photos which Inspired Compositions, please click below for:
People & Premieres Musical Memories
Click a photo to see a large size - some files are scans of older photos, I apologize for quality issues!
Photos & Musical Inspiration
 Dawn over Richmond, CA as seen from my Aunt & Uncle's home in Tiburon. Watching this sunrise, from complete darkness to when the sun peaked over the hills, gave me the idea for a piece exploring the event of sunrise through correlations between frequencies of light and those of sound. August 07 |
 #1: Welcoming (Valley Road in Early Morning) These are the photos which inspired the six movements of Autumn Trees (V48). All 6 were taken chronologically over the course of one day at the campus of Montclair University. Little known fact: a working title for the suite was Trees of Montclair State University, but I figured the Respighi's estate would sue. October 02 (MSU) |
 #2:
Innocence
(Dickson
Hall
in
Late
Morning)
Once I saw this little sapling, I decided to spend the day taking photos of trees around campus. Ironically, a few years
later this little tree, inspiring the naïve second movement
'Innocence' was uprooted for, of all things, a smoking kiosk. Go figure.
|
 #3: Yearning (Music Building at Noon)
Though it was nearly impossible to capture, this tree had one branch reaching out, interestingly enough in the direction of the music building. |
 #4: Comfort (Webster Hall in Late Afternoon) These trees seemed to surround and protect the dormitory Webster Hall, which was, inronically where my girlfriend lived at the time. Looking back, there is a lot of irony in this piece's compositional journey. |
 #5: The Evergreen (College Hall at Midnight) By this time, the desire to find images which would allow a coherent musical structure led me not only to stay up all night but to stay outside in a terrible thunderstorm. My efforts were rewarded though, and if the visual quality of this dark shot is lacking, my memory of standing near the tree when it was hit by lightning is surprisingly still pretty sharp. |
 #6: Triumph (The View from Freeman Hall at Sunrise) It seemed only appropriate that the suite should end back at my own dormitory. The storm had passed and the trees, as in the first photo, populate the land. Here, what was the colorful pageant of the leaves in photo #1 is reflect in the grandeur of a sky painted by the Sun, welcoming a new day. |
 Brahms 4 with a nice cabernet. |
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