Passages
Thirteen luscious piano solos celebrating birth, death, transformation, forgiveness, love, & joy!
This has been a very personal, and at times difficult, project for me. There’s a lot of loss in this album, but there’s also tremendous joy.
I am dedicating this CD to “the two Christines”:
Christine Cole
I will always be grateful for your friendship & your care & your love of my music. Here is the new music you wanted! Like a Flower is for you especially.
Christine Thompson
I miss you! I will remember your courage and integrity to the end of my days. These Hands Held Music is your elegy. Be sure to play piano again, next time around, so we can play more duets.
And of course, to you my listeners. Blessings on all your passages through life.
Kathleen
Tracks on Passages:
The Gossamer Doorway
Where it all begins: possibly a veil; but to me, more like a doorway.
Siúil A Rún
Devastation marches in, and marches away again. But the sweetness that follows … !
This is my arrangement of the Irish song, best known in the US as Buttermilk Hill (Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier), popular during the Civil War. As in Siúil A Ghra (Shule Agra, on my first CD A Handfull of Quietness), a woman is singing of her love, for whom she has sacrificed even her way to support herself, so that he would be armed for the war he has gone to join. Will he return? How will she manage in the meantime? ”Go safely, my love,” she sings at the end of every verse.
Shenandoah
Of love, and time, and the river of life—a beautiful melody, supported by a rolling river underneath, and embellished with sparkles of light through water up above.
Autumn Whispers
Late in the day, late in the year, what whispers do we recall? Do we wish for more? Are we content with what we have heard or said; felt or learned; dreamed or attained? What haunts us as the year draws to an end?
A Warm Autumn Sun, It Was
The year may be winding down, the darkness may be closing in — but there are yet moments to bask in the sun. Warmth, cheer, love, new dreams — all these can be found in the autumn sun.
More about the creation of A Warm Autumn Sun, It Was can be read here. (Link will be fixed soon!)
Leaving Home
The trouble with leaving home is saying all those goodbyes! Some need to be said more than once, more than twice, more times than we can count.
And yet, leaving home is the first step in creating new home, new life, new joy — to add to all the ones left behind and carried in our heart.
The Pomegranate Trail
To journey out of the dark while keeping the memory of mystery.
[A theme and variations where the melody may sound familiar. It should, as I borrowed it from an old folk tune!]
Like a Flower dedicated to Christine Cole
Be like a flower
Turn to the sun
Cherish the river’s laughter & fun
Dance with the moonbeams
Sing to the stars
Bring beauty here & far
Bloom like a flower
Shine like the sun
Flow with the river’s laughter & fun
Dance with the moonbeams
Sing to the stars
Bring beauty here & far
These Hands Held Music dedicated to Christine Thompson
A friend to cherish, a life to mourn and to celebrate. There would be music, of course.
[I have so much more to say about this piece that it will be a blog post one of these days. This piece probably means more to me than anything else I have ever created. Which is not at all to diss any of my other music!]
Toward the Setting Sun
As the day closes, the journey continues. There is so much more!
Topaz
This music was born in a moment of forgiveness; and forgiveness is simply always a good idea.
(Even when the “transgressor” mucks up a good grudge by apologizing! Aargh! I was happy* being mad!)
* for certain warped values of happy
Through the Gossamer Doorway
Because there is always more! And aren’t we all curious about that more? What is on the other side of the veil?
Passages
The sorrowful and the sweet.