Program Notes

Luminescence was intended as a sort of valentine for friends who had played a good deal of my music. It therefore is a rather intimate, gentle piece, with perhaps an element of pathos. It harks back to my jazz roots simply in the fact that it is a rather straight-forward tune constructed over somewhat traditional jazz chords. The structure of the piece is derived from the repetition of those chords (as is usually the case in jazz performance), with the melodic line continuing as a notated solo in the style of an improvisation. "Luminescence" received it's premiere by Steven Mauk, soprano saxophone, and Read Gainsford, piano, in Ithaca, New York