En pièces détachées was commissioned by Peter Kovner, who asked me what I would most regret not having composed if I were to die tomorrow. My spontaneous and heartfelt answer: ‘More piano music.’ Remembering the ‘deep clear breath of life’ which Yoshiko Kline brought to the work of the same title ten years ago, I asked her if I could write these pieces with her in mind. She premiered four of them at the Rivers School Conservatory Seminar on Contemporary Music in March 2023 (the second and fifth pieces had not yet been composed), and the complete cycle at Tanglewood on July 5, 2023.

My hands listen to the sun began with the sunlight streaming through the windows of my studio onto my hands. It evokes for me the radiant spirit of adventure, discovery, and wonder that accompanied the most important encounter of my life, my meeting with my wife. The piece begins in heterophony–a melody that is almost in unison. The work gradually increases in complexity and dynamic motion, ending with an exuberant passage that may suggest wedding bells.

From a dark time reflects a sense of anguish at the cruelty, injustice and suffering which have become all too familiar in our world. A brutal march, images of desperate flight, a plaintive song of lament, all give way to a faint glimmer of something which might be hope, an evanescent glimpse of radiance.



Unbridled is a scherzo, its mischievous insolent playfulness punctuated with brief explosions of energy. The interplay of staccato and brief lyrical fragments intensifies as the piece progresses.

Lockdown reflects our collective recent history: a feeling of helplessness and sadness interrupted by rebellious outbursts of pain, grief, and anger. These moods are articulated by a recurrent refrain, both built on a chromatic descent: one soft, slow, and deliberate, the other impassioned and headlong. The piece culminates in a final, slowly descending lament.

The clock takes a bath was born out of a desire to create a more robust counterweight to the ‘dark time.’ The ticking of the clock takes us from an initial throbbing wistfulness, through a process of ‘cleansing’, into a sense of freedom and joie de vivre.

Little Richard Dances with Bartók stems from Peter’s challenge to somehow incorporate the sizzling piano style of Little Richard into my own writing. The incursion of Bartók came as a complete surprise, albeit a welcome one.