Listen to My Stuff!

Basically, I just realized I could do this from my account on CD Baby... I mentioned my new CD some weeks ago. It is a collection of piano music, mostly impressionistic things -- stuff meant to capture my own version of "the American experience." As I say in the liner notes;

This is a collection of piano pieces that I have written over the last fifteen-ish years. The “American Sketches” were begun with the piece “Little Boy, Right Field,” which I improvised one summer evening after having biked past a Little League baseball game. It occurred to me, then, that my American compositional predecessors (no comparison of artistic worth implied) like Copeland, Hanson and Grofé had tried to capture the more dramatic aspects of America: canyons, massive cities, mountains and rodeos and the like, but, inspired by the little fellow watching the butterflies in the most boring (and intrinsically insulting) of all children’s baseball positions, I thought it would be cool to capture impressions of a more intimate, everyday American experience; hence, the  suite of piano pieces that I call “sketches” were begun and slowly completed over the course  of a life that demands more from me than just composition. Some of these do move through cities to vast beaches, but most resonate in suburban streets and on summer porches. I hope these “sketches,” along with the other pieces in this collection, make you feel something.

So, just listen, if you want, but also feel (more than) free to download any and all tracks you wish. The actual CD is available at CD Baby and you can also download from iTunes and Amazon, but I'm not getting rich on this, so no guilt for just listening here. I hope you like what I am up to. 

American Sketches

Many apologies for being pretty inconsistent with posting recently. Life. Such a bother.

At any rate, I thought I would post to tell you about my new musical project, American Sketches. It has been mentioned here before as a work-in-progress thing and I have even posted some rough versions of the pieces. I am happy to say that the project is complete.

It is a CD of piano pieces that are all, thematically, tied to my own version of the "American experience." The best way to describe the music is that it is "impressionistic." Each piece is entitled with a place or scene and the music is meant to recall my own experience with that scene -- the feelings and...well...impressions.

The music, I think, is a little more sinewy than the kind of impressionism we tend to think of as related to the French Impressionism masters Ravel and Debussy, but it is composed for the same purpose as that of the work  of all impressionists, so I can't think of a better way to label it...

Of course, I like to think that there is a great deal of "me" in my music, but I do think that the influence of my favorite American composers (Barber, Harris, Copeland, etc.) is present -- but there are probably some Ravel moments as well... (I spent the years between the ages of, say, seventeen and twenty listening to just about no other composer.)

I wanted to make an actual CD, even though that is going out of fashion, for two reasons. 1) CDs sound better than MP3 downloads and (2) I wanted to create a cool package, because I miss the days of listening to music and either reading album liner-notes or flipping through a CD booklet. My sister, Gina Matarazzo a professional designer and artist, who now does books but who designed CD packages for many years, did the work. The beautiful photography on the CD is by my lovely and talented wife, Karen (who also designed this site for me), and Gina used computer magic to turn the images into "sketches."

We created a package that reflects the pieces in quite a literal way. (I have always liked that, for some reason. I think of Rush's covers for, say, Moving Pictures [movers actually...moving pictures] or Permanent Waves [pictorial representations of each song].)

The cover is a photographic "sketch" of my son, Will, seven years ago, on the baseball field. In looking for images, I found this in some photos that Karen, had taken over the years. This one struck me as timeless looking and it was the perfect reference to the piece "Little Boy, Right Field."

The back of the box contains the track listings, but, also, a picture of the moon in the morning sky, a reference to the piece "The Morning Moon," which is based on something my father never finished composing before he died two years ago. I finished it for him, because I had always loved it.

The booklet insert contains the back-stories to each of the pieces on the CD, as well as internal illustrations of some of the pieces. The photo on the outside is of Widow Harding Pond, on Cape Cod -- the pond that gives the title (and mood) to the piece that is its namesake. The inside of the CD box contains the "thanks yous" and credits as well as an illustration of a whaler's wife on a "Widow's Walk" waiting for her husband's ship to come home...a reference to the "miniature symphony," "The Widow's Walk."

The pieces on the CD were written over the course of almost thirty years. (The liner notes say "fifteen," but Karen convinced me to put a piece on there that I wrote when I was nineteen because she has always loved it. It's called "Dancing with Catherine." I like it too.) Nothing is virtuosic -- I'm not a concert pianist -- but everything is more meant to be more like orchestral pieces on the piano; sort of a score to some of my life's experiences. There is almost an hour and twenty minutes of music, so a lot of "bang for the buck" as they say...

It's not available in CD just yet, but downloads are available on Amazon, iTunes and CDBaby. I will stress, though ,that the CD is worth it, if you still have a player and like interesting and artistic packaging...

Thanks to everyone who reads for their continued support. I'm very proud of this one.

"Waking the Sun:" The Art of Family

I was kind of groping for something to write today. Thinking about it last night, I had a few ideas, but nothing that "knocked me out." Then, I woke up and Karen, my wife, was checking Facebook on her phone and she found a video had been posted of the song I wrote, arranged and produced with my friend Mark -- the one I shared some time ago, here. (Please believe me when I tell you we are working on working diligently on the next tune. It's been a busy summer...)

Of course, it delighted me. Mark made this video with his talented daughter, Cassie (who I am sure did the bulk of the artistic work).

Musicians are always chasing fame. But Mark and I made choices long ago: we wanted families and we our lives to have more dimensions than music, even though music has always, for both of us, been the other side of the every scale's balance in our worlds.

Fame? Meh. What is cooler than making a song, in your own home, with one of your best friends? What is cooler than a father and a daughter sitting down to interpret that song, together?

Nada, my friends.

Here is the video by Mark and his multi-talented daughter, Cassandra, for "Waking the Sun." If you don't like it, just clam up (he say, gently elbowing his dear reader in the ribs). Whatever you might have to say is hardly the point....
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Track One: "Waking the Sun"

On a frigid Thursday night in late December, I sat with two of my best friends in a nearly empty pub. We ate wings. (Well -- two of us. The other has a wheat issue. Something about the breading. I dunno.) We drank some good brown beer. (Well -- two of us. The other with the wheat issue...I think he had Scotch or something.) Anyway, we talked about many things: philosophy, psychology, and...music. Specifically, the music that Mark (the one without the wheat issue, but plenty of others, let me assure you) and I had created some months before. We talked about doing more.

Mark tends to stomp when he plays.
This is a problem with open mic's in the room,
so, one needs to be resourceful with solutions.

We discussed everything from doing a Christmas record, to pass down to our future generations, to putting together a totally conceptual, avante garde "sound tapestry" of studio magic. In truth, we didn't set a musical direction at all, really. But we did, at Joe's urging (the wheat guy), set a date to get together and write some music: January 11. If Joe hadn't been there, Mark and I probably would have drifted off into our usual vague existences. Thanks to Joe, we had a date on the calendar.

January 11th, a Saturday, came, and Mark showed up bearing coffee and donuts (and blackberry brandy, which he claims enables him to sing anything at any time of day, which appears to be true) and I threw a chord progression at him. In about twenty minutes, we had the backbone of a pretty good song.

My wife popped her head into the studio: "If you guys don't get together and do this one a month, I will kill you." (This meant, in Karenese, that she was pleased with what she had heard.)

Pigasus

I have said before, on here, and also when I was writing the column "Artistic Unknowns" for When Falls the Coliseum, that I don't believe in THE creative process. People speak of it as if there is one way to do things. Not only do I know that different artists and writers have different procedures, but I also know that I don't have a set procedure for myself. And I love that.

I am officially ready to start recording my second CD. This one will be an instrumental CD -- a collection of songs on which (among other goals) I can have a little fun on the drums; flex the chops a little. The tunes carry a concoction of influences from everyone from Rush to Ravel. Seriously eclectic.  The working title is Pigasus, taken from a character John Steinbeck used to draw on letters to Pat Covici: the pig, trying to fly, that was meant to be a humorous self-deprecation on Steinbeck's part: "earthbound but aspiring.... A lumbering soul but trying to fly...(with)...not enough wingspread but plenty of intention." In short: me.

As it stands, the songs are in the form of MIDI (computer) mock-ups. The arrangements were done on the computer, including the drum parts. What I need to figure out now is how to humanize things. I have no idea, yet, as to how I am going to do this. I do know it will involve guest musicians, recording of the real drums and, likely, a replaying of all of the other parts.

Something Different: Invocation

About a year ago, I released my CD, Hats and Rabbits, which I announced here, and the links to buy it have been up on the right, ever since.  Some of you have bought the CD or downloaded it, and I greatly appreciate it.

In the midst of my responsibilities and duties, progress is slow in the area of actually promoting my work. Finally, I have gotten around to putting my songs in a format through which I can share them. I thought I would do two things, today: 1) Share a song from the CD with you, along with a short explication and, 2) offer it for free, if you should like it, as a humble thank-you for always coming back to this dive bar of a blog.

You know, I’m caught in this…place. I hate show-biz and wannabe stars. (I even spend breaks on band gigs in my car or with a friend or my wife instead of schmoozing, like a proper rock star.) Music is just another way for me to express myself. Expressing myself is what drives me, daily. I know I’m not going to be a star and I am not looking for anyone to tell me what a musical wonder I am -- I just want to share this as another blog post, if a musical one. If you decide to get the CD, that’s great, but I can tell you there is no hope of it making me rich. My payment is that people listen. That’s enough.

Hats and Rabbits CD Update (He Says with a Grin)

I promised I would let everyone know when my new CD, Hats & Rabbits became available. Well, it just did become available and I'm pretty excited about it, I will admit. (Though, as a testament to at least one reason why I'm not a more successful self-marketer, I was a little disappointed that I had to put off writing about my next blog idea . . . but stay tuned for it on Wednesday. )

Right now, it is available from "CD Baby" as a physical CD and as a downloadable album. (They're a reputable company with good roots in the music business, so no worries.) Just click the link at the right -- or here. To my surprise, the warehouse is down to four physical copies. More will be shipped to them soon, though. But the digital downloads are always available.