Here, for the first time in a long time, is something I wrote — but it’s not the music!

A couple of weeks ago, I recorded some of my friend Todd Harper’s songs with Kim Sueoka, a marvelous local soprano who sings with (among others) the Rose Ensemble and a first-rate voice/guitar duo called Voce y Cuerdas. She’s great, Todd’s great, and by golly, we had a wonderful time making the recordings!

Todd mostly writes voice / piano duets — and that’s mostly what we recorded — but he also did a lovely a cappella setting of one of my poems, and that’s what I’m publishing first. The poem is short, and so is the song.

Todd Harper, music
Paul Cantrell, words
First Autumn Night
Kim Sueoka, soprano

Download (0:25 / 0.5 M)

The poem is a haiku. Syllable-counters in the audience may object that the lines do not follow the 5-7-5 pattern haiku are supposed to follow, but the syllable count rule isn’t important in modern English haiku, and many poets ignore it altogether. It only really makes sense in Japanese — English syllables are a very different ilk from their Japanese cousins. Moreover, the syllable count isn’t really the heart of the form.

What is the heart, then, you ask? A haiku is a direct experience, a single moment of perception caught before the mind has fully digested perception into narrative and meaning. It is typically tied to nature, often tied to a season*, but these are both optional in modern haiku. Perhaps most important feature is that the haiku has two parts: first a direct perception, then some second perception or mental twist that deepens the first part or casts it in a new light.

The separation between the two halves is a significant moment. In this song, Todd renders it ("halo") with the highest note, and the snaking, tonally shifting, rising melody of the first part (the autumn night, the moon) becomes sweet, diatonic, and falling (the illusion of the halo). Nicely done, Todd. And nicely done, Kim.

More songs to come!

* OK, I know it’s not autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. You caught me.

Here is a second selection from this year’s Keys Please to follow Todd’s little musical rattlesnake adventure. This is an improvisation by Carei Thomas, the rattlesnake’s narrator, now on piano. I thought — and he said afterward — that there was a little nod to my own funny little improvs in this one, especially in the way it starts with a very low note and a very high one … but it’s definitely a Carei thing!

Some improvs have a definite form (head-solo-head, fugue, tala) or a definitely style (Dixieland, bebop, Ghanaian drumming) … but this is one of those that’s just completely spontaneous and organic, and grew out of silence in a completely organic way — like a spring daffodil poking its head up through the jumbled twigs and dead leaves. Todd and I actually murmured to one another during the applause, “Oo! Where did that come from?” Only Carei knows, I suppose, and maybe not even him.

Carei Thomas
The Usual Topic
Carei Thomas, piano

Download (2:27 / 3.0 M)

I took care of my girlfriend Paige’s pet parakeet Pegasus recently while her landlord did some emergency plumbing work, and Pegasus joined in one day while I was practicing the piano. It was not the standard chirping, but a complex mix of all sorts of sounds Pegasus doesn’t normally make, which followed the music quite well – louder in the loud parts and softer in the soft, somehow matching the texture and fitting into the spaces in a birdsong sort of way. It was like she was a soloing on my material — a really wonderful bit of inter-species improv.

I tried to capture it in a recording the next time I practiced, but she wasn’t as interested in the piano that time. Too bad! I did, however, manage to capture a bit of a human singer on the microphones, which I will share next time.