Released in May 2025. Note my albums are a great value with over 70 minutes of music on each one!
About the Album: At the Mostly Modern Festival in June, 2024 I spoke with cellist Dave Eggar about recording some of the music he and others had played there. It expanded into the full album presented here. Dave’s efforts bringing together an amazing group of musicians at Spin Recording Studio in Long Island City/Astoria, Queens NY made this possible, along with Phil Faconti who helped with decisions during recording, Dave working diligently on editing, and the awesome engineer Linds Cadwell. The first piece starts with a large extent of space and time, reminding us to put current events in perspective. Arriving on Earth we find lawlessness and chaos. Then comes music relating to different times and places on our planet, then the rise of oligarchy and authoritarianism, a fugal interlude reminiscent of tragedy some 80-90 years ago, a subsequent despondent ragtime, a few climate pieces – a temperate rainforest, wildfire, and different approaches to agriculture, and ending on a pleasant note reflecting on the beauty of rain and a gentle evening scene. A few pieces have been expanded from my first two albums. In addition to all the musicians listed, thanks go to Terry Keevil, Gerold and Cathy Mohn, Tari Roosa, Stewart Edelstein who helped with test runs of some of the music in an October 2024 concert, my amazing artist wife and friend Jaye Alison Moscariello in designing this album, creating the artwork, singing in the farming piece, offering suggestions in composing, word editing, and almost all aspects of this project, supporting musicians during recording with sustenance, and so much more. I thank all those great composers and songwriters, from Bach to Tracy Chapman, Debussy to Eric Sondheim, Brahms to Paul Winter, so many not mentioned. I am grateful for all those who have encouraged me musically: my father Arnold Taylor, mother Priscilla Taylor, sisters Lucy, Charlotte, Hannah, brother Tom – all musical themselves, Harriet Shirvan, Jerry Gray, Ken Benshoof, Cornish School, Robert Paterson, Stephen Cabell, Sam Adler, Tarik O’Rhegan, Mara Gibson, Paul Moravec, Veronika Krausas, Rob Smith, all the fellow composers at Mostly Modern Festival and musicians and conductors who played my chamber and orchestral pieces, all those thanked on my first 2 albums, Dave Eggar, Linds Cadwell. To anyone not listed, all of you shine through in creating this project.
Please listen first to the music before reading the notes on each piece; you may well hear things better without my interpretations, which I provide if you are curious (I love to tell a story).
Recorded at Spin Recording Studio, NY., Nov. 2024. Mastered by Andy Vandette, Production: Bill Taylor, Dave Eggar, Jaye Alison Moscariello, Linds Cadwell, Phil Faconti
Lucy Soundscape 2: NASA provided the 3-note motif and I submitted my first attempt in 2021 to meet a deadline, to the “Lucy Soundscape” website where many other composers posted theirs. I expanded it after sharing it with MMF composers and getting suggestions. Now it closely approximates the Lucy spacecraft’s speed and perks up when all the instruments are focusing on the next asteroid (fast string and oboe playing). Because it uses multiple gravitational slingshot flybys of Earth, the speed varies a lot, and because the mission is 12 years long, scaled it to 20 measures per year for most of the piece. Then with the 2028 to 2033 time period with only one asteroid pair to visit, I compressed that time even more to keep the piece a reasonable length. The Trojan asteroids orbit in 2 clumps 60 degrees ahead of and behind Jupiter, beyond the main asteroid belt.
Hiding From the Law I. Hiding and the Chase: I had a dream in 2019 of being in a narrow building looking onto a narrow street under some kind of building or overpass, like a train station along a highway. Here the slow opening theme and then the faster “running” theme came to me. There was someone in the building with me who was hiding from the police, and at first it seemed they did not know where he was, but then it turned out they did and came looking for him. I wrote down the dream and musical ideas on awakening and later added sections. Chasing, trying to be unpredictable, resting a moment, and not sure how it ends.
II. Chaotic Times: After recording the first movement in November 2024, I created a followup movement, in light of the recent presidential election and continued rise of oligarchy, climate chaos and xenophobia around the world. While the first movement was conceived as a common cops and criminal chase, it could also be a criminal hiding in political office with plans for immunity thereby. After some halting starts, sort of waiting to see just what will happen, about a minute and a half enter several 12 tone rows, inverted and reversed, rhythmically varied and sometimes broken into segments. Many considered serial music as evil, as discordant (it is often dissonant to an ear trained to earlier European forms, folk, or popular music), but a bath of it could begin to seem more normal, especially a century after its invention. This chaos ends fragmented – is it species extinction, end of democracy, or fading of a nightmare? Are the bird calls at the end a hope or omen?
Ode to Ludwig: Discovering a 2 chord progression containing a 4 note motif was my first step in creating sketches of the piece back in the early 1980’s. After writing the solo piano part in 2018, my wife Jaye said “I hear violin with this”. I added cello in 2019. Starting in 12/8 sometimes felt as 6/4 with a sort of floating set of themes, a 4/4 section introduces the 4 note motif. While Beethoven repeated the first 3 notes and accents the fourth, my motif repeats the last 3 notes with accent on the first note. It ends in 7/8, with an energetic rhythm reminiscent of Balkan music that incorporates the 4 note motifIn the early 80’s I read that D flat is the key of the Earth, and also it is the easiest key to play for someone with wide fingers. When I learned strings are not at their best in D flat, I changed to D so it sounds good on either strings or woodwinds, switched to oboe and bassoon for an Oct, 2024 concert and oboe and cello here.
Swedish Band Dream: In a dream, a Swedish string band played the opening theme on the street in Chinatown in some U.S. city where I had gotten lost. I walked past it pretty quickly so added more themes on awakening. A slow section leads to a fuguelike treatment and then back to some of the earlier themes. There is a sense of urgency throughout the piece. It is dedicated to Greta Thunberg, Swedish climate activist.
Saratoga Salsa: At MMF 2023 a French horn player said if I wrote a horn piece, she’d play it. I asked her the kind of music she likes and she said “salsa”. I finished it after MMF 2023 ended so she didn’t get to play it. After performing a shorter version on Oct 6, 2024 and talking with Dave Eggar, I realized that trumpet would be better. The piece has 3 different sections, each with their own rhythm.
Normalizing Evil: I had a dream in which I heard the voice of Luxor (I know, that is a city in ancient Egypt; it was possibly Luthor, a villain in various versions of Superman and the Marvel universe). He said “You will do evil, and no longer think it is evil”. I was not sure how to express these ideas musically. In an attempt I wrote 3 movements of Normalizing Evil under 3 ideas: “Anything Rows”, “The Back and Forth”, and “The Last Hundred Years: 1924-2024”. The first uses the 12-tone row idea and much of it appears in Hiding From the Law’s second movement. II. The Back and Forth. For the second, I created 3 discordant “evil” sounding motifs interspersed with “pleasing” passages. Each of these 6 are presented in exposition, but with each section getting a bit longer than the last as information and tolerance of discord ramps up, and they return in a sort of development/recapitulation, a back-and-forth dialog, hence the subtitle.
III. The Last Hundred Years: 1924-2024. The third movement performed at MMF 2024 explores group adoption of evil ideas. The tubular bells introduce the rhythms of 2 dictators’ speech rhythms, one from the 1920’s to 1940’s (in his rile-them-up cadences, not his regular speaking voice) and the other from 2016 to present (Tremendous; Very Bad, Lock Them Up). The other instruments (oboe, bassoon, piano, and cello) and at times the harp, alternate between their own tunes, protest themes, and the martial rhythms of the sample dictators’ speeches. There are 2 different protest songs (a Yiddish melody from Es Brent, by Mordechai Gebirtig, used as a protest during Hitler’s persecution and extermination of Jews and other groups, and “We Shall Overcome” from the Civil Rights movement in the US, and reused in modern times). The snare drum alternating with the bells creates an underlying militancy. Later in the piece, the protest songs are played in the speech rhythms and a martial rhythm to signify the capture and mocking caricature of them by the oppressors (often with a sliver of freedom symbolized by themes played in their original rhythm by bassoon or others). Tempo changes and more complex interweavings depict the increasing chaos and confusion. The movement ends quietly, with the original tunes of oboe, bassoon, and cello and echo of dictator-speak or is it a protest? In a 2024 performance the musicians walked away from each other and played the last notes each in their own world.
Fugue: I came up with the theme and wrote a short jazzlike 4 voice fugue for fellow students at Cornish Institute in Seattle, around 1982. I misplaced the piece but remembered the theme. For a March 2020 concert I rewrote it for 7 instruments, but with COVID we never performed it. Jaye is inspired to create a video based in 1930’s Vienna in which 7 couples dance and then disappear as so many did in the following years there.
Ragged Out Rag: In Columbia I was at a 5-week composing retreat and had a moment of despondency about writing music – why bother? I laid down on the floor and the opening tune of this came to me and quickly the second part came out. A few weeks later I added the third part which is a bit more optimistic in tone. The piece ends with a recap.
Of The Woods: The piano part of this piece came out one month in 1983, a few measures each day. It felt channeled rather than written – more like birth than development of some initial idea. The northwestern US forests are a cathedral, and Keve Wilson’s oboe and Gina Cuffari’s bassoon soar and dance within it. The original piano part was written when I lived with Judith da Silva whose last name translates to the song title. At the time I was influenced by the Paul Winter Consort, Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118, ##2, and Chopin prelude #15 which also is in D flat with a brief bit in E.
October 8-9: Redwood Complex Fire. I was asked to write a short piano piece for a September 2018 fire survivors performance of monologues about the October 9, 2017 Redwood Complex fire. Our personal experience was unique in that the July 2017 Grade Fire blackened nearly all our land and actually allowed us to stay and put out ember fires rather than fleeing in the firestorm many experienced. Our stress was largely not knowing what happened to others. I performed it in September and October in Ukiah and Redwood Valley as a solo piano piece which is on the Nature’s Dream album. I wanted something about the fires that affected our community to appear in a Ukiah Symphony concert on March 24, 2019, so when in Colombia writing music I added some parts; recently I rewrote, added increasing dissonance to each appearance of the hot wind sections, recalling how our bamboo windchimes were clanking crazily. I wrote words to help me create and organize the short episodes of music:
“Red Flag Warning, Jaye came home from residency! hot wind, Happy reunion, hot wind, romantic evening, hot wind, warm embrace, sleep, smoke or just a hot night?, sleep, Yanahay texts “Potter Valley on Fire”, red on our ridge, Fire!, how again?, who to call? Everyone we know between here and Potter Valley, landing ember fires, propane tank booms.” Fire survivor monologues about a caravan escaping over a dirt road with 14 stream crossings, as well as others facing the flames and driving through them, had their influence on the last few parts of the piece. 9 people died from the fire directly, numerous others badly injured, and still others from the trauma they experienced died in the ensuing months. But the community came together beautifully, created art from recovered objects, helped each other, and buried differences that no longer seemed important. The 2019 version of the piece was featured in Jaye Alison Moscariello’s documentary From the Ashes.
Regenerate, Heal, Cool: I am passionate about solving the climate crisis by restoring natural cycles such as the water cycle. The way more “civilized” humans have farmed for millennia, with plowing that destroys soil life, creating hot surfaces of deserts, removing large animals and most plants that keep the water cycle going, and burning carbon in the soil, informs this piece. The second movement depicts the solution being practiced by truly regenerative farmers (ones not using biocides). These methods were generally practiced by indigenous cultures but abandoned with a more violent and competitive culture that seemed to accompany what we call civilization, leading to the fall of numerous such societies as their land was depleted of biological processes. We can learn from past mistakes, as many farmers are now doing. This is especially important now as biological farming cools the climate by replacing bare soil with vegetation, restores the water cycle, and increases soil carbon.
The first movement I. Sere is in 2/4. It describes the growing season on a monoculture farm, starting with driving mechanical music for plowing and planting, a tranquil rain which becomes a downpour with erosion and ponding due to compacted dead soil (glissandi). As the land dries out, the bare soil heats with direct sun (dissonant chords and irregular rhythms). Between the flooding and heat, the crop does not survive so a rushed replanting followed by rain and fertilizer-induced rapid growth brings pests, weeds, and biocide spraying (somber music). Lots of descending glissandi and quieting presents the death of the soil life. A dirge conveys the frustration of paperwork, insurance claims, and crop failure. A dust storm seals the disaster, followed by meager harvest and plowing under.
The second movement II. Alive has a joyful tone throughout. This biodiversity, vibrant, abundant natural farming movement is in 13/8 which allows interesting intrameasure groupings with diverse rhythms and sounds. It opens with bird calls, a lively scene above ground with interwoven motifs from all instruments. A few successive tonality changes point to the rich biodiversity of this regenerative farm. A darker idea represents pests entering, but they are quickly handled by the intelligence of the ecosystem. Even more interweaving of themes and shifting rhythms draw attention to the below ground world that makes all this abundant life possible. It builds gently into a continuing dance with bird calls, underground and aboveground life (animal, fungal, and bacterial), & happy plants.
Seattle Cascade/Shutters Corners: The rapid descending notes came first in Seattle October 1982 downpours interspersed with bright sun; I discovered/created that pattern on my piano looking out at the dramatic weather. In 1989 I was bicycling on a heavy Soviet folding bicycle up and down hills in the Catskills, and the setting sun and gentle downhill in Shutters Corners, NY made for a happy postlude where the tune in the second part of the piece came to me. I combined these 2 and linked them with other ideas into a solo piano piece recorded in 2011. At the CD Release concert I wrote an oboe part for Paul McCandless which we finally recorded in 2017. In 2024 I added a bassoon or cello part to make a trio, and for this album I orchestrated it for a chamber orchestra and removed the piano. A musician friend calls the opening discordant part “the bats!” It is a piece with lots of starts and stops, several repetitions of the rain shower motif, alternating with moods during a time (1989) of many changes in my life. I think it fits the many changes in our times as well, with a hopeful peaceful end.
Art and album jacket design by Jaye Alison Moscariello. Artwork as follows: From inside L: Summer Jazz 3, Bugged Out, Within.Without with photos by Jaye Alison Moscariello, Darkness to Light. From outside L: In Memory of Opportunity, Planetary Patchwork, Connection, Encounter