Bittersweet Sheet Music Bittersweet
1. First Light - Dawn, a
fresh idea, new beginnings, and a sense of potential is what I hope to catch with this
sketch. 2. Thirty-Three - An
instrumental love song written for my wife, Susan, when she was thirty-three. She won't
let me tell you how old THIS tune is. 3. Bittersweet - My mother
always said, "You will never know how much your parents loved you until you have
children of your own." She was right of course, and as a parent of two lovely girls,
I find the joy of this attachment so sweet that its temporality is bitter indeed. 4. Red Ball Jets - Long
before Air Nike, there were Red Ball Jets. When I was a kid, they were THE sneakers to
have. They had a little ball on the back of them which was thought to, somehow, make the
wearer run faster. ...A sunny Saturday morning, new shoes on your feet, pure potential
lies ahead. Is this a perfect world or what? 5. Pinky's Dream - One of the
hardest things I have ever done was to name my kids. With my oldest (Bryn), we used
"Pinky" as a working title until we could decide on a better one. I found it
intriguing that she had dreams as a newborn. I thought to myself, "What can she be
dreaming about? She doesn't know anything yet." Then my wife, Susan, reminded me that
perhaps she had more to dream about than any of us having been, so recently, with the
angels. 6. Summer's Last Song - By
following the opening crazy rhythms with a more melancholy theme, I was attempting to
capture that late August feeling when one realizes Summer is about to end. You go about
your last fun of the season as if it would last forever, all the time knowing it will be
over soon. 7. Clear Air - I left for my
gig with a family tiff still hanging in the air. The room I was to play was stale with
cigar smoke. I wanted to clear the air both figuratively and literally. Not feeling the
entertainer, I dropped my hands into a personal improvisation and out came the seed that
led to this song. I worked it out on a bar napkin during my break and returned home to
find resolution. 8. Sodie - Sodie was my
father's boyhood nickname, as it was for all three of his sons, and now, one of my two
dogs. Whenever somebody calls me Sodie, I know without looking that the caller goes way
back to Boy Scout days. I wanted to get at the naivete of childhood as well as the
nostalgia we adults feel looking back on it. 9. Bijou - A late night
ballad with several inspirations behind the title: 1. Bijou is French for gemstone (the
continually shifting harmonies suggested my facets." 2. A reminiscence for a time
when Jazz WAS popular music. 3. The name of my oldest dog who is one sophisticated lady. 10. Just For Fun - When I was
19, I was too broke to buy a birthday present for a special friend. so I wrote her this
song instead. It took a lot of practice, at the time, to get it together with my fledgling
technique. I remember my piano professor reprimanding me from the hall outside my practice
room about how I should be concentrating on Mozart. 11. Blackberry Winter - A
cold snap in late Spring is believed to make the blackberry crop especially sweet. Cold
nights, warm days, Summer coming on - it is a delicious time of year. 12. Daedalus - In Greek
Mythology, Daedalus escaped the Labyrinth by consrtucting wings of wax and feathers for
himself and his son Icarus. Who has not dreamed of flying on their own power? This is my
attempt to capture how it might feel. 13. L'Aventure - I was lucky
to grow up in a time and place with few fears. With a neighborhood surrounded by forest, I
would set out regularly with my buddy for this "wilderness." Unsure of how our
improvised play would turn out, we knew only that we would return safe and happy. This
song follows a similar route. It opens with a comfortable theme that wanders ever further
into a unplanned, improvised wilderness only to return to familiar ground. The French
title suggests our very serious pretentiousness. 14. Take It on Faith -
Sometimes you just have make the leap. This tune moves back and forth between western and
eastern musical scales. To me, it seemed an apt metaphor for the cross-cultural east/west
spirtual learning that we are currently experiencing. |
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