March 21, 2023

Shortly after I moved to Hawaii in August of 2015, a cigar box arrived in the mail from my friend Danny Clay. It was an ornately painted box with a mysterious title in Latin: Invenias quod velis et recorderis quod habeas, which translates to find what you want and remember what you have. This box contained 62 sketches to be made into music, or anything for that matter. There were match books, transparencies, maps, prompts, graphics, and fragments of musical notation. In a lovely note, Danny expressed that he remembered that I wanted to play all 62+ of Haydn’s Piano Sonates, so he thought he would write me 62 of his own. He had no expectations for what would come out of them, and suggested that we figure it out as we go and discover what it all means together.

Digging through this box brought back memories of the times I spent with Danny talking about music, composition, and teaching when I still lived in the Bay Area. Danny and I both cared deeply about teaching kids to compose no matter how young they were, and practiced that philosophy in our own teaching. I founded projects like A4TY, where kids ages 5-18 premiered each other’s works in addition to performing music written specifically for them by living composers. Danny taught his elementary school students to make sounds by experimenting with graphics that occasionally were performed by professional musicians. We shared the belief that there is magic in giving young people permission to create and express their voices freely.

In all my years of being a performer, I never felt comfortable or even allowed to compose, largely because my musical upbringing taught me that you did either one or the other - not both. In a way, I was exactly what I didn’t want my students to become when I founded A4TY. Did Danny catch that in our many conversations? Perhaps he did know, and it prompted him to extend a warm nudge to send me on my own creative journey.

Seven years have gone by and for some reason, I am finally ready to explore on a consistent basis. I will take this one piece at a time, and let it fold into my daily life, like the loving company of a friend.