The Recital / 2024
a book of children’s music
podcast︎
Awarded a New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant.
For the past few years, I have been teaching at The Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School ("The Fil"), helping people with vision loss pursue their study of music. Each semester at The Fil culminates in a recital, an endearing display of growth, both technically and expressively, as well as emotionally and socially. Piano performances are at the core of these concerts. Nearly all the students at The Fil play piano, making the procession of keyboardists at each recital a census of sorts, a sonic enumeration of who and what make up our community. Performances range from interpretations of canonical works, like Beethoven's Pathétique, to the note-by-note plucking of simple melodies. I have been deeply inspired by the innocence and sincerity of the performance I witness at these recitals. To listen to these small humans wrest sound from this colossal instrument is to listen to the very act of learning, the dizzying germination of youth. Beautiful and unintentional expressivities emerge from the disparity between body and instrument, mind and material. Slips of the fingers and memory yield new durations, harmonies, phrases, ornaments, and rests. At these recitals, I witness these moments and often think, "wouldn't it be wonderful to write music that draws upon the expressivities of early learners?" I also think, "wouldn't it be wonderful to write children's music with pathos to counterbalance the playfulness, with poetry to complement the pedagogy. "The Recital" is not only a response to these recitals and repertory, but also the extraordinary imaginative and attentional capacities of my students.