lian-summer-echoes




hardware:   Apple PowerBook G4/OSX
software:   RTcmix, max/msp ([rtcmix~]) Digital Performer 4

Lian was the first of our two children to leave home for college; son Daniel was still in elementary school at the time. The emptiness in our lives formerly filled by her presence was mitigated by the knowledge that she was doing exactly what she wanted to be doing. She attended Brown University and has been thrilled by her college experience. Oh, time! Oh, family!

Wiska Radkiewicz, our good friend, neighbor and piano-teacher for both Lian and Daniel, had set Lian to work on a Prokofiev piano piece (his Visions Fugitives #1 (op. 22)) as a "final project" of sorts. Wisak asked Lian to record herself so she could get a critical perspective on her playing. After Lian left for Brown, I took the scratch recordings and constructed this piece from them. The cicadas in the background are indeed the 17-year variety, recorded in Princeton while Lian was getting a final eye check-up before departing home. While recording I was thinking that the last time I heard that sound she had just been born. Interestingly I didn't have to shift the basic pitch of them to match the piano.

I can listen to this piece and still hear her practicing, as if nothing has changed. But it has.