Curt Siffert

Another Kasey Baker painting, in response to my piano musings.

Glass and Steel is about a particularly tragic automobile accident.

Glass and Steel

"There is a stillness after destruction that is peaceful and stunning."

Another example of how the Creative Commons is cool - I heard from a "Captain" Pat McGeown, who is producing a community television show in Sydney, Australia. He'll be using one of my piano musings, Old Toy Soldier as part of a soundtrack for one of his episodes. There's a brief article about it here, and in a few weeks the episode will be up online and I'll have it here.

All of my Piano Musings are podsafe, which means that podcasters can grab them and use them as background music for their podcasts, as long as I'm credited, etc.

There is a site called Podsafe Audio that specializes in categorizing this kind of music. I just created a page specifically for the piano musings, and you can find it here.

Lisa Albinger has finished the painting that was inspired by My Favorite Clown, here is a picture:

My friend Lisa Albinger, a full-time artist and recent new resident of Portland, is working on a painting inspired by My Favorite Clown. She has some pictures up of the work in progress. What fun! I'll post a picture of the finished work here when it's completed.

Another Kasey Baker painting, in response to my piano musings.

Metal Knotted came from a discussion about the nature of anxiety and what it feels like when it dissipates. I didn't actually know that is what I was feeling when I improvised the piece, but Kasey captured it afterwards by coming up with this artwork in reaction.

Metal Knotted

"Start with a loose tangle. Find two ends, and start pulling them in opposite directions. Make them want different things. Force through the tangle, fight against it. Turn it into a knot, make it harder, as hard as metal. Then remember, how could metal ever become a knot? To untangle, remember where it started. With softness."

One of the fun things about having my stuff up online is that people will occasionally ask permission to use them for random things. Yay Creative Commons. Paul Ivanov asked permission to use All Aboard for a local contest having to do with the Berkeley International House. Here's the resulting video - my music starts about 1:30 in. It's just a rehearsal recording of my song, and Johns Williams is a tough act to follow, but it's always fun to see one's own work applied to someone else's stuff.

Another Kasey Baker painting, in response to my piano musings.

Dancing About Architecture corresponded to a time when Kasey and I were just getting to know each other - she told me she was an architect and I was challenged to come up with something that represented architecture in my mind - simple structures that vary with time and effort. I couldn't get as complicated as I wanted since I was making it up as I went along, but I felt that I got the idea down. Kasey then responded with this work.

Dancing About Architecture

"It's a strange structure, new. She moves around it tentatively, slowly assembling the pieces in her understanding and movements. It's a careful embrace, but ultimately whole and secure."

Another Kasey Baker painting, in response to my piano musings.

Busted Lemonade Stand came from a random memory of a friend telling me about her attempts to sell lemonade when she was a kid. Her and her friend didn't tell their moms what they were doing, so they kind of improvised.

Busted Lemonade Stand

"Lemonade stands always sound like such a good idea. Although sometimes there's splinters in the plywood, or the ice melts too fast, or you realize you don't have enough dixie cups, so you start reusing them. And the day stretches on."

Some of you may remember that one of my side projects is Acoustic Conversations, where we interview gigging musicians and bands and ask them to perform acoustic versions of their songs for us. The latest episode is an interview of outPost, a local band that fuses reggae, hip-hop, and other things - their music is a complete blast to listen to. We've just uploaded some the songs that we recorded over on acousticconversations.com, and I'm sure the interview will be coming soon. Go on over to check them out and download their tunes.