Finding Beauty in Small Places

This solo piano version of Finding Beauty in Small Places (2023) is dedicated to my friend, the pianist and writer Rhonda Rizzo. It was originally commissioned in 2021 as a work for solo guitar for the guitarist David Leisner by The Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music. I owe the title to my dear friend Russell Merritt who listened to me describe how the work was evolving. How I’d been tied to the idea of “breath”—of breathing in and breathing out—as a way of shaping the musical gestures. And how, when the piece opens up and tries to move forward, trying to break free, it always returns inward. He said: “It seems like you’re trying to find beauty in small places.” His words made me think that this work, in fact, is a timely affirmation of beauty and purpose in a changed and challenging world.

This work is dependent on memory and the movement of breath, on breathing the musical gestures and following the lead of the rhythms and the poetry inherent in the breath—a pattern of breathing in and breathing out established in the first seven measures.