KATHLEEN RYAN

As you know, I did a weekend of touring with pianists Lisa Downing and Lee Bartley last week. We had three concerts planned, in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Pagosa Springs. Well, I performed on two of the three concerts — dangerous driving conditions kept chauffeur (aka, roadie–techie–groupie) and me from reaching Pagosa Springs! That is the first time I have not made it to my own performance, and I very much hope it’s that last time too, as I would rather not be out in conditions like that in the first place. Picture this: the sky is a leaden light gray; the road and all the ground is the same leaden light gray, with only the (beautiful in snow, or at any time) Ponderosa pines breaking up the monotony with their green; there are several inches of minimally plowed packed snow on the road; and now all of a sudden: fog! Where it all looks like leaden light gray. Oh joy!

So that was the downside. The wonderful parts: Lisa and Lee are both amazing pianists and it was inspiring to hear them play and talk about their creative process. My life can be very insular, and I forget that others deal with the exact same issues I deal with: why does this piece of music want to go this way? What am I really trying to express here? What is this about? How do I know when it’s complete? To hear Lisa and Lee talk and play reminded me that I’m not the only one trying to make my way through the maze of creating new music; and even better, that my answers to those questions, and solutions to the musical puzzles I create, are not the only answers or solutions.

Lisa’s music is very rich and complex, layered and intricate. I think  it would be tough to play well, and Lisa expresses it beautifully. Lee’s music is quite frankly the happiest music I have ever heard — he can compose piece after piece without ever falling into the nostalgia that affects so many pianists, me included sometimes. My music is emptier, somehow, while still being lyrical. I’m starting to understand what Echoes meant about the “austerity” of my music. I have a very stripped down, minimalist style, compared to either Lisa or Lee.

I believe this means our audiences had a wonderful variety of piano music to listen to throughout the concerts. The audiences were certainly receptive and attentive, even at Vanessie, which as a piano bar naturally had more distractions in the environment.

Oh, and a great thing about playing at Vanessie: dinner afterward (at Vanessie, of course; do do do go there when you visit Santa Fe) with all of us and our significant others. Great food and even better company — a treat in the life of a pianist!

Here’s what I wish everyone playing my music knows already. Well, first I hope that someone wants to play my music! Today I am writing some of it down for you, and writing it down drives me a bit batty, so here’s what I hope you know, on that magical day in the not too distant future when you open up your Kathleen Ryan sheet music:

I have no idea how fast or slow you are to play these pieces, so please don’t expect to see a metronome mark! Yes, I’ve managed to put them into many of the pieces I’ve already published; but it was with much grumbling each time. I don’t even play them at the same tempo each time. I place a MM= some number or other on the score, and the next day when I try it out, that number seems completely wrong. Bah! I will not be placing numbers into my score anymore. It’s not about the numbers.

I will give you tempo notation, but it will most likely always be feeling–based. All my music has to do with feelings! Deep feelings, often, I hope, but still feelings. Today I can play the opening of Water in a Dry Land at one tempo, and it is free and a bit dark and wonderful; tomorrow who knows?! But it will be whatever speed is free, a bit dark, and wonderful. What counts is the free, dark, wonderful quality; not the speed.

I assume you know how to bring out the melody. I’ll do my very best to make that melody obvious on the page, so you can do your magic.

I assume you like to use the pedal, and will use it to create a lovely legato; and I’ll only put actual pedal markings on the page when I’m doing something very specific and possibly a bit unusual. My friend Lee thinks I don’t use much pedal. Hah! Fooled him. I’m pedalling nearly constantly. I also half–pedal a lot, by the way. Try it — it’s fun!

Okay, end rant. I like getting my music out, but this metronome thing in particular just really gets me going — faster and faster and faster. Alas.

To me, true silence is settling down into a stillness that vibrates so intensely that it contains the universe in seed form — all song, all life, all possibilities: not manifest but completely present in the silence. Inner silence is our birthright, our nature.

Many people meditate to cultivate the experience of inner silence; I do too. I cannot give you a meditative experience because only you can give that to yourself. But I can create music that is born in the silence in my own heart, and you will recognize that silence because it is native to you.

Outside my meditation practice, I have many doorways to silence — actions or moments during activity that call me back to my true nature. At the top of my personal list: 

• soaking up the beautiful vistas and sunsets here

• coloring!

• dreaming in the shade of a “greenwood tree”

• music!

Especially the music on this newest CD Under the Greenwood Tree.

So I hope you decide to give this music to yourself and your friends, because it has been my privilege and pleasure to offer it to you.

May you have music all your days,

Kathleen

In William Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It, the character Amiens sings the following words:

“Under the greenwood tree, 

who loves to lie with me

and turn his merry note 

unto the sweet bird's throat —

come hither, come hither, come hither:

here shall he see 

no enemy 

but winter and rough weather.”

I first read those words when I was invited to compose the incidental music for a production of As You Like It. This text was one of the songs I needed to set, and I was immediately struck by the words of the refrain. What a blessing that is: “no enemy but winter and rough weather”!

A few summers ago I created the music for what became the title track of this CD. For a while a version of Under the Greenwood Tree existed that included my long-ago theater setting. Ultimately I took out nearly all of my theater music, keeping only a brief quote at the end of the piano piece. But to me the piece still carries the meaning of Shakespeare’s words, even though the music that accompanied those words is no longer included.

The CD is named Under the Greenwood Tree because that is the blessing my music is bringing to you: to see no enemy but winter and rough weather.

Under the Greenwood Tree — songs of home and shelter — is now available at CDBaby.com for just $15.

Buy it, and then just relax into the music. Let it be a doorway to silence for you.

But why a doorway to silence?

to be continued...

Under the Greenwood Tree, that is. After all this time! And it’s beautiful, if I do say so myself!

Well, actually, the beauty of it has a lot to do with the gorgeous photography of my friend and neighbor Robert Groos, who was able to find the one location in our county that would have lush green trees. This is New Mexico, after all.

Here’s what it looks like:

Rich, eh? That’s what I was striving for with the music, too. Soon I'll have the samples up, and you can decide how well I did.

Of course you can purchase it, too. Right now by mail order, and very soon it will be ready at CDBaby as well. Stay tuned.

I’m a happy pianist today!

Whatever could that mean?

Getting the obvious out of the way: not “complete lack of sound”, since there’s music, which in my world at least is sound.

Most of the time we are subjected to sounds, some of which are musical and most of which are not. Sometimes we choose sounds to listen to, but most of the time sound is just pouring in upon us; and even when we choose sounds to listen to, other sounds are still pouring in upon us. Even when we are asleep, sounds pour in, and to some extent we are monitoring those sounds, that is: listening to them.

It’s a noisy life!

It’s also a busy life. Face it: how much time do you spend just being? Isn’t there always another thing to do? When you sit quietly, isn’t there often a voice quietly or not-so-quietly calling you back to action? Busy busy busy, do do do, go go go: where exactly is the stillness, the center, the quietness?

We’re all familiar with music that just adds to the noise, and no, I’m not planning to name any genres here! Sometimes I like really noisy boisterous active pounding on my body music. It can come in all sorts of genres, and when that’s what I want, that’s the only music that will satisfy. 

Also, some “art music” of the last half-century or so is right up there with certain modern art in celebrating the ugliness (noise) of everyday life. I don’t personally understand that. We know life is often hard, incomprehensible, seemingly unjust. Do these artists really think we haven’t noticed?

What is more challenging is to make visible the beauty that thrives in the often hard, incomprehensible, seemingly unjust stuff of everyday life.

To make it possible to hear the stillness that lives inside the music. Or, more precisely, the stillness that the music (and, I believe, everything else in Creation) is made out of. To sing the song that reveals its source to anyone who cares to seek it. To create the music that is a doorway to silence: stillness within the storm.

To me, it is not music for meditation. It’s music that already lives where the meditation is supposed to take you, music that lives in the place where everything comes from. In one of the Narnia books, CS Lewis wrote of a place “between the worlds” — not a world, but the source of all the worlds, so fertile and alive and still. The silence I’m striving for is like that: utterly quiet, but so brimming with life as to be humming continuously.

When I have found that silence in my meditation, I have always heard song. Those are the songs I want to bring you.

It is possible that it cannot be done!

It is possible that it can!

Well, we finally had the premiere of Verbs, Book 2 a couple of weeks ago, and that was thrilling for me, and also caused me to sit back a let out a big sigh: that project is essentially complete, at last!

Writing the 24 preludes of Verbs is the biggest compositional project I’ve ever undertaken. When Keith asked me to do it, I happily said yes, then wondered what I’d gotten myself into and if I could really write 24 whole pieces! for someone else! that he would actually like! and in time!!!

Fortunately, Keith was pretty flexible on the timing; originally we thought I would compose all 24 in 2007, and instead I made it into a two year project.

I was honored and thrilled to receive the PMTNM commission. Then I created a bit of writer’s block for myself, worrying that my writing would not be “good enough” to justify the commission. This past spring I spent a lot of time rejecting the musical ideas that came to me. As you might imagine, not many pieces flowed out then!

Which brings me to the “my process” part of this ramble: how I got over my writer’s block. One day, I think in June, I was fretting about Shatter (which did require a few revs to get “just so”), when the verb tangle popped into my head. I knew immediately that it had to be one of the verbs that I set to music, and also that it would be a tango. (Seemed obvious!)

And that it would be in F# minor.

And that it would have two lines that twisted into a tangle.

And that it would be really fun to write. So I started playing with it immediately, and not doubting myself, and having fun and following the musical ideas wherever they led me: not only a tango, but also 12-bar blues form. A funny multi-tonal version of F# minor for the first verse. Great emphasis on e-sharp/f-natural, even to the very last note!

I think Tangle is the strongest writing I’ve ever done, and it also is hot, sexy, interesting, unique music. I knew I liked it, and when Keith played it at the premiere I was stunned at how much I liked it. Now my goal is to learn to play it well, with Keith’s performance as my model.

The moral of my little rambling: constantly second–guessing our creative ideas — fatal! Following those ideas wherever they lead — sublime!

And may we all be able to remember that every day of our creative practice!

Recently Keith performed Verbs, Book 1 (which I’m sure you remember I wrote for him) here. We had a lovely audience, more than 40 folks crammed into my studio and living room. Afterward, over cookies and punch, I was asked how I compose.

Where do I get my ideas?

Is is spontaneous, improvisatory?

Do I sketch out ideas?

How do I know when a piece is done?

Do I have a process?

Answers:

I don’t know.

Yes.

Yes.

I wish I knew. Usually I keep going until it “sounds right”.

Yes: keep going.

I usually have a sense of what I’m trying to bring into being. Some sounds, or an idea, or a mood, or less often just a decision that I want to write something in 3/4, or in Eb major.

I most often will play piano at least some to get going. If it’s a piece for me, very often the entire piece is created by trying out sounds on the instrument. I’ll write down parts that seem either likely to be forgotten (some significant sparkly detail, or some unusual series of harmonies) or too hard to remember until well-practiced.

For Keith’s pieces, significant amounts have been composed away from the piano. Usually I sit on the banco, with a view of the birds and the mesa, with iced tea (creativity stimulant of choice), and manuscript paper, and pencil, AND ERASER! I listen to the sounds in my head and I write. I’ll only use the piano to check that I wrote it down correctly.

And then, of course, sometimes I just ask what the piece sounds like—and the music tells me. The highest experience I know.

Details on another occasion.

My Christmas album, The Rebirth of Light has been released and is receiving very positive reviews.

It’s October. Don't you think it's time to consider that yearly vexing question of what to get your zillions of friends for Christmas? And don't you think they'd really appreciate some music that helps them tune into the spirituality of the season? Music with both tranquillity and power?

Which you can wrap and mail really easily?

The Rebirth of Light is available at CDBaby.com.

Just sayin’...

Grace and peace to you,

Kathleen