Zeal (two pianos)

for Piano Duo

Overview

I composed Zeal while living in Atlanta, Georgia in 1992. My (soon to be) wife Carla was working in IT for IBM, and I was ensconced at Wood Hollow apartments in Marietta writing this piece for Double Edge (Ed Niemann and Nurit Tilles) both pianists in the Steve Reich group.

There's a significant A-to-Z bookmarking in my output. The 'A' is Abhisheka and the 'Z' is Zeal, both written in the first half of the 1990s when I was still in thrall to the ethos and priorities of a university-composer mindset. Both of these pieces share a fascinating characteristic - they are the (only) two works of mine that other composers consistently (almost universally) give a big thumbs up to. No other works I've created share this distinction. And yet ( - and more subtly - possibly because of this composerly-consensus), I feel more detached from these two works than any of my others. Don't get me wrong, I love both pieces and am proud of having created them, but I believe they came from a time when I was still more 'in my head'. Composers reading this, who know some of the music I went on to write, may think that was a good thing and I should have stayed in my head, but in my own journey I'm glad to have freed myself from that imbalance between the head, the body, and the heart. A few composers felt strongly enough over the years to tell me they wished I'd continued to travel the path I was on with Zeal and Abhsisheka. I guess it's a 'composer's piece'.

There are five movements

1 Lulling Imagination to Sleep