KEEP AN OPEN CHANNEL (2021)

for piano solo, ca. 4 minutes

Performed in Homer, Alaska and Berlin, and recorded in Mount Vernon, NY by Conrad Winslow in 2021.

PROGRAM NOTE

Keep an Open Channel was composed in 2021 for the celebration of my marriage to Michael Amico. It is linked to the ongoing conversation between Michael and me about principles of communication, and about what openness really means.

On a technical and structural level, Keep an Open Channel is an etude in wide-compass cantabile playing, using the extremes of the keyboard to stake out broadband harmonic spaces. Each phrase contains a simple exchange of voices, sometimes bright, sometimes penumbral, sometimes threatening to crack apart, always responding, always seeking to create an open space.

It is also linked to a childhood memory of sitting with my mother by the single sideband radio in our cabin waiting for the appointed time to contact my father, two hundred miles away in Bristol Bay, Alaska, during the herring 􏰂fishing season.

In 2020, my Aunt Becky Desmond, a music therapist and life-long lover of classical music and passionate supporter of my endeavors, passed away at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, blindsiding my uncle Timmy. He subsequently became a licensed ham radio operator and enjoys communicating with speakers around the world. This piece is dedicated to the memory of Aunt Becky.