Musescapes 1. Gee Whiz for Piano Trio: violin, cello, piano

Musescapes (all three movements can be purchased together for $45.00 on the Purchase page) had its beginnings in 2005 when Carol S. Gee, a radiologist/pianist/photographer with a great love for chamber music commissioned me to write a work for her piano trio. I thought it would be great fun to write a three movement work with roots in North American jazz and South American tango music. Since there was no due date for this commission, it languished between periods of composition and longer periods of working on other projects. All the time, I was mulling over titles that I thought appropriate to the material.

Then, The Newstead Trio, a marvelous piano trio with whom I have had a working relationship since the early 00s approached me to compose something for them in honor of the opening year of the new Philip Johnson-designed Pennsylvania Academy of Music Hall in Lancaster, PA, and the lost piece of the puzzle was put into play. Six movements AND a due date later, "Musescapes" popped into my head and seemed the perfect title for this multi-movement work. The muses were at play here, and the scapes (scenes) evolved. The first movement, titled "Gee Whiz" is a jazz-flavored work filled with whimsy and interplay of the violin and cello answering each other’s musical motifs while the piano plays mediator.