Modern Music for Piano 2 by Various Artists

Play! for solo piano is a piece of virtuosity and gesture. It consists of a grand sweep continuously reinterpreted throughout the music’s duration; a gesture that, initially, has the pianist slowly descend from the instrument’s highest notes towards its deepest grunts. Everyplace in this journey the listener will hear individual motives reimagined through imitation and virtuosic dialogue: a mini-gesture would stutter, cheekily mocking its predecessor all the while making use of complex rhythms performed at breathtaking speed. While highly virtuosic and technically demanding Play! has select moments of simplicity, clarity, and poignancy that provide an emotional contrast to its relentless, mechanical pulse.

As per the tile, the works is inspired by the many migrating birds that go to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. When the birds appear, people think that winter will be coming soon. Some birds stay and live on the lake during winter. Other birds fly away toward warmer places. The beginning of the piece represents a quiet lake in the forest. Little by little migrating birds appear in the sky. They are flying in the cooling air, and swoop down on the lake elegantly. The middle section represents some baby birds playing with water and singing but time has come to leave. The finale of the work brings the destiny as the birds flying away reach their next destination.

Originally intended to be the first movement of a sonata, the main thematic material for this fantasy was composed entirely during sleep. Music ‘written’ during sleep was then penned in a notebook after waking up. Collecting six years-worth of these ideas formed the main thematic elements. After constructing the primary and subordinate themes, the main sections were treated as a parent function in mathematics. Using the concept of graph transformations, the original idea was then stretched, diminished, shifted, rotated, and reflected, resulting in unique musical mutations. In addition, concepts from group theory, such as permutation and cyclic groups, manipulate symmetrical properties between intervals to create a highly unstable and unnerving character. This quality attempts to portray the unsettling events which accompanied the music in the dream-state.

Fakebook II, a suite for solo piano, was written for pianist Milton Ruben Laufer. Its three movements constitute individual homages to some of the great jazz pianists and composers of the mid-Twentieth to Twenty-first Century. Conceived as a continuation of the earlier Fakebook (Garner, Monk, Shearing), and preceding the recent Son of Fakebook (Peterson, Evans, Zawinul), the movements incorporate the pianistic styles and gestures of the pianists whose names provide the titles, and each elaborates upon a tune or tunes associated with them: Chick Corea (a much-admired friend of the composer), Art Tatum, and Dave Brubeck (whose son, Chris, is a much-admired musician and former bandmate of the composer).

Nocturne (2006 - rev. 2009) is a piece characterized by a wandering narration that moves between two different expressive poles represented by on one side the restless and fragmented initial proceeding and on the other the ecstatic contemplation of the central section. In the latter, the initially melodic traits transform itself and change until both become, in the expressive climax, a 'virtuosistic arabesque'. The erratic narration that outlined above then retraces backwards outlining an arc structure that ends in a short coda where the piece finds its conclusion, gradually fading towards the high register.

Moondust is a hybrid genre that mix jazz, post-minimalist, and Eastern folk tune. is inspired by an imaginary scene: a young water sprite that walks on half-submerged rocks near the body of the sea, when the moon is rising. The soft moonlight shimmer is like gold dust that is poured on her young face. The opening figure of this piece played by the left hand is the “sprite theme” that describe her nifty flips among the rocks. The right-hand figures are the moonlight rays surrounding her. The sound of a cadenza with its grainy texture corresponds to the title “moon dust.”

An advanced work for solo piano, Passacaglia adheres to traditions established for works in this genre, including the Passacaglia in C Minor (BWV582) by Johann Sebastian Bach and similar contemporary works by Walter Piston and Samuel Barber. The subject is an ostinato bass built on a 12-tone row. Two freely chromatic counter-subjects mark the first and second of the 16 variation. In spite of its classical traditions, a great deal of expressiveness is intended for performances of this work.

Dimensions is a work for piano inspired by themes representing the Universe in its physical, quantum or philosophical dimensions. The nine themes serve as a support for musical writing. The number 8 represents "What is beyond space and time". The space is symbolized by a slow and wide motif in the first part of the piece and time by another more rhythmic part.

Aria is part of the composer's 3 Variations after J.S. Bach that were written for pianist, Tzufeng Liu. The composer's points of departure were the bass line from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a palindrome rhythm that is a recurring feature in much of today’s contemporary pop music, and the concept of unfolding perpetual melody that Bach used so exquisitely.