When I was twenty I briefly dabbled in ceremonial magic.  That's not just a title; it's also a true statement.  Earlier that year, during a period of emotional turbulence, I'd written some fragments of dialogue that seemed to be imbued with a mysterious power and significance.  It felt as if something had spoken through me.  For most of my life I've looked at the world through a secular lens, but that summer, an occultist friend helped me construct a ritual, based on my own personal symbolism, which was designed to allow me access to whatever had inspired those strange writings. 

One of the elements of the ritual was a piece for electric piano, which I wrote and recorded in a single sitting.  Seventeen years later, I' reworked it for prepared piano — more specifically, for the same set of preparations as those used by Cage in his Sonatas and Interludes.  The skeleton of the music hasn't changed, but the newly unpredictable nature of the instrument has sent many of the notes scurrying off into other registers.  The piece has also acquired new pedalings, voicings, tempos and articulations, reflecting the ways my musical thinking has changed over the years.

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download score (pdf)