Final Reflections

Hello People of Earth,

The Plant Songs project concluded with the 29th song last week. I consider the project to be a success. I accomplished what I set out to do, and I believe the work was of good quality. I felt genuine love for all the songs I came up with. They were all special for me.

It feels weird to not be working on a new composition this week. When I started this method of internet sharing, I did 5 years in a row of various projects, from 2010 to 2015, then I took a little time off when we moved to Beacon in 2015. Then the 24 Standards project went from 2016 to 2019. Our daughter was born in May 2019, and it seemed right for there to be a break in projects at that time. So five years had passed from the end of the 24 Standards Project until Plant Songs. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started this project. It felt great to be creating music and sharing it again in my own small way.

I spent some time looking back at earlier projects this week in preparation for writing this final reflections post. It was interesting. Most of my output back then was a little more dissonant, weird, avant-garde. But it was still me. The essay writing portion of the projects became more prominent as I proceeded through the different projects, and that trend continued into the Plant Songs. For this project I wrote more words than ever and I enjoyed that part of it more than ever as well. Sometimes my choice of titles was steered a certain way just because there was something I wanted share about in my essays, although the titles always fit the music for me.

Back in Brooklyn, during the Weekly Composition Project (2012-2013) and The Messiaen Project (2013-2014) I wrote about some of the psychological issues I was facing as a musician, mostly in regard to what I thought others thought of my work, and also how challenging the music industry was. Happily there was not much of that going on at all during the Plant Songs Project. In fact, I’m happy that I wrote a lot in the essays for this project, because I think it is a nice chronicle of a very happy period of my adult life. The project itself, and the Mount Beacon hiking routine that has gone on for over a year now are the main contributors to this happiness. My daughter getting a little older and more autonomous hasn’t hurt either. It has been a very magical time for me - I think I can say it’s been the happiest period of my adult life. That’s not to say there can’t be improvements made -there’s plenty to work on. But in many ways, this was a very spiritually rich and happy period for me, and I’m glad it was documented in this project.

As with all my internet sharing projects, this one came with surprises. I’m surprised by how much essay writing I did. That was a really enjoyable part of the weekly routine, as I already mentioned. Even more surprising was how many medium and fast songs came out. As I wrote in the post for song No. 13 The Ascent, “When I started the Plant Songs project, I was gearing up to defend myself from myself about all the slow songs I would be writing. But as always, these projects go their own way and I’ve now released six songs in a row that are not ballads, at least in my mind. Go figure.” I can’t really say why more fast songs came out, but I’ll take it. It was nice to explore that side of music a little more.

When I started the project and named it Plant Songs, I thought perhaps each title would be of a particular plant and I might meditate on that plant a bit to come up with a song. That happened a little, but actually my experiences on Mount Beacon provided most of the inspiration, and some of those had plant titles. I realized part-way through that these didn’t have to be songs about plants, but rather that the word “plant” could be used as a verb. So I’ve planted 29 songs into the world. Some will flourish, some will just stay alive, and some won’t live beyond their documentation in this blog and on YouTube. I really enjoyed attaching titles to these songs and having them represent something for me. The songs themselves with their titles will also serve as a documentation of this period of time for me.

My decision to remain off of social media for this project was the right choice for me. I hopped on at the very beginning to make an announcement of it, but that was all. In avoiding social media, I do occasionally feel like I’m missing out on news from my friends. But ultimately I think I’m much happier without it in my life. I recommend you give it a try. It may seem silly or wasteful to some people for me to not be sharing each song on social media. But I had some loyal followers that regularly let me know that my songs were reaching ears, and that was enough. The songs will hopefully continue to find new people on YouTube for years to come.

Thanks to all of you who listened, and all who let me know you were listening. Sincere thanks to all of you who gave me a comment, online or in person, or shared the project with friends. It really meant a lot. Special thanks to Tim Brown who commented on every single Plant Songs post!

One thing I realized during this project was that my artistic output didn’t go away when I moved to Beacon and eased up on my musical activities. And it didn’t go away for 5 years after our daughter was born. Rather it shifted to another medium: the garden. I believe that many of the world's problems are solved in a garden. I had a strong drive to get my garden in order as quickly as I could, and a lot of my creative energy has gone into co-creating with nature a productive and beautiful system. The cool thing is that that system is providing food and medicine (physical and spiritual) for many humans and other beings and it now has its own momentum. It’s giving back. It will continue to produce for years, even after I’m gone.

If we buy the first round of drinks, Nature picks up the tab for dinner and a show.

- Toby Hemenway

So I’m feeling motivated to transfer the creative energy of the Plant Songs project back to the garden, to caring well for the plants, animals, and fungi that live here.

The Plants Songs project will remain here on my website. And there’s a YouTube playlist of all the Plant Songs that I hope you’ll enjoy from time to time.

I will be back - and it won’t be five years before the next musical project. Gardening work and mountain hikes allow for plenty of contemplation. So as I go I’ll be dreaming up new project ideas to go along with the ones I already have on my mind. For now, I’ll do as Joni Mitchell suggests:

We are stardust,
We are golden,
We are billion year-old carbon.
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden.

At the Pinus rigida grove on Pitch Peak. Friday March 28, 2025, moments after a pair of Coopers Hawks were circling just ten feet above my head.

29.) I Wonder

Hello Dear Readers / Listeners!

The 29th and FINAL song of the Plant Songs project is called I Wonder.

I really fell in love with my previous song child, Notitia. I kept playing it for days after I made my recording. It actually made it hard to catch a new idea. I was unsure if I was going to find something. Happily once I did, the song unfolded pretty quickly, and here I am with time in the week to spare. Phew!

For I Wonder I returned to language more in line with the Great American Songbook, although this may be more chromatic than anything Jerome Kern or Richard Rodgers wrote. There are some strange harmonic shifts in this song, although I’ve gotten used to them and they no longer sound strange to me. I’ll be curious if anything stands out to you listeners.

These are more complicated chords than the many of my triad-based songs, yet they feel so liberating, like I can go anywhere and play anything over them during the improvisation. As I wrote the tune and started practicing it, I was hearing all sorts of counterlines. It was quite enjoyable. I ended up jotting some of them down on my score for fear that I would either miss some opportunities, or play too much of the same kind over and over again if I left them to improvisation. Even so, one could argue that I added too much. Maybe after some time goes by, I’ll listen and feel that I did. But it’s okay and it was fun.

I think this melody has a child-like sound to it and I was looking for a title that expressed simple curious wondering, like kids do - like we used to do. I still do a good amount of daydreaming. I don’t know if all artists do that, but it seems like it might be important, maybe necessary. What you do is go to a natural place and look around and contemplate and wonder about anything and everything, and you leave your stupid smart telephone off and get reacquainted with your imagination. I’m reminded of a George Carlin bit about children:

I think everyday all children should have three hours of daydreaming.  Just daydreaming.  You could use a little of it yourself, by the way.  Just sit at the window, stare at the clouds.  It’s good for you. If you wanna know how to help your children, leave them…alone!  

This song concludes the music of the Plant Songs project. Wow, what a journey it has been. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the project with a final reflections post which should drop next week. Thanks for reading and listening and looking out the window from time to time.

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28.) Notitia

People should follow their feelings.  You know you start walking through the forest and a certain plant stands up for you.  The Indigenous Peoples would say when a person needs a plant it will stand up in the forest and start calling to them.  All of us have those senses.  We move and something catches our atttention in a moment of notitia, as James Hillman called it, the attentive noticing of the soul.  We start to follow it and that’s like following this golden thread that leads deeper and deeper into the heart of the wildness of the world.  You know the journey back to wild water is a long one, but all of us find it in our own way.  And if you follow those feelings, they lead you on the most amazing adventure and you end up becoming yourself in the most wonderful way.

-Stephen Harrod Buhner. Transcribed from an interview by Daniel Vitalis

Greetings! How about that quote, huh?! Wow. I’ve mentioned Buhner before in this project. It’s remarkable how many times I’ve experienced some profound feeling, usually on the mountain, then then read about it soon after in one of Buhner’s books. His book Becoming Vegetalista, which I read earlier this year, was so on point with what I was experiencing, it was almost weird. But wow I loved that alignment.

The 28th, and penultimate, song of the Plant Songs project is called Notitia. Yes it’s true, the next song will the be last! It is oh so bittersweet. I won’t elaborate on it here. Rather I’ll save that for a final reflections post in a couple weeks.

After the last couple of songs, which were somewhat complicated, I was in the mood to write a simple-ish, country folky song. On Saturday I found a great playlist of WIllie Nelson live on Austin City Limits; just golden stuff. Willie is one of my songwriting heroes. On Sunday evening I went to write, and I came up with a pretty nice eight bars of music that sounded a lot like Willie. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I wondered if I might fall in love with it over time. Then on Monday, just before my first student arrived, I found a progression that could be a nice introduction to the Willie-imitation bars, and this progression I loved right away.

After the long day of teaching I worked with it again, and ended up writing a melody that fit over the intro chords. Still I held onto the Willie bars. I thought they might work together. But then on Tuesday morning, I continued to work with the intro progression and was really enjoying how it was coming together. Then a bridge started coming to me, and I finally let go of the Willie bars. Word to the wise, influences are usually best kept a little distant. Meaning listen to Willie a lot now, let it soak in over time, and then let it come out organically when it’s ready. Imagine and integrate, don’t imitate.

What I ended up with still has some Willie influence, and some Lead Belly influence as well. You can tell me if you hear any other influences. But if you’ll allow me to say with all humbleness, I think Notitia mostly sounds like me. I liked playing it, and I enjoy listening to the recording. I think composing a lot is the best way to find out what you sound like, to find your voice.

I think Notitia has some harmonic surprises. There are no V (five) chords in it. I had one at the end of the bridge originally, but it wasn’t the right flavor, so I adjusted it to what you hear now. To my knowledge, all of Willie Nelson’s songs have at least one V chord. There is much in this song that points to the key of A major, but it is definitely in E major. E is the tonic.

So now, as this song is published, I sit here one last time wondering if I’ll be able to pull off one more song. Will an idea come? Will I be able to catch the idea and spin it into a song? Will I be able to learn to play it and make a recording that I can tolerate listening to? Can it all be done before the end of next week? I just don’t know. So far I’ve been able to do it reasonably well. But maybe this last one will finally get me. All I can do is show up, be open, and be ready to work.

Thanks for listening and reading and being on Earth right now.

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27.) Microbes

Greetings Communities of Beings,

The 27th song of the Plant Songs Project is called Microbes.

Microbes have been on my mind this week as the weather has warmed and I’ve begun the monumental task of compost sifting and spreading. Our chicken flock does most of the composting work at our house. I designed a system in which the chickens would alternate pasturing on two separate garden plots, every other year. The plot that the chickens are not on gets planted in annual vegetables. However, I no longer rotate them in that way, because I prefer a no-dig system with permanent beds and mulched paths, AND because since the system was implemented, an extremely tall house was built next door which partially shades one of those plots in all seasons except for a short window around the summer solstice.

Chickens make a mad mess out of wood-chipped paths. So now I have the annual Spring task of screening chicken yard compost and applying it to the annual vegetable beds. I have 9 beds and each one takes about 30-45 minutes of work to apply compost, and I decided it’s worth that effort to keep the no-dig and permanent path system. In the wintertime there is one garden area that the birds do have access to that I also plant with annual vegetables, during the growing season. In this area I don’t need to apply much compost, since the chickens are on it during the winter. They’re manuring it for me, but they’re also scratching, and digging holes. This has benefits, but one big disadvantage of it is that they bring up a lot of weed seeds. That plot gets very weedy in the growing season, while the plot that they never go on with the permanent beds and paths has very little weeds.

When I apply compost, it’s only top dressing (adding compost to the top, not mixing it in). I like that system. And I enjoy the exercise and direct sun in the Springtime when I’ve got to do the screening and spreading work. And I enjoy the microbes. Every time I hear the statistic it gets higher and more impressive, but it’s now said that in a teaspoon of healthy soil contains over 1 billion microbes. My epic Spring task is good for me. I get exercise. I get sun exposure before it’s too strong. I get fresh air. A perhaps best of all, I get a microbiome inoculation. I have to wear good gloves when I’m sifting compost, which involves working it through a screen of half-inch hardware cloth with my hands. I’d have no skin left on my fingertips if it weren’t for the gloves. But plenty of compost gets in, as my dirty hands will show. Yeah microbes. Don’t worry, I wash hands well before I play the piano.

Now onto the music. Last week’s song, Pinus rigida: Endurance had a great deal of structural organization. Microbes is much more random. I recorded an improvisation during which I got into a texture like you hear in this song. I enjoyed it. I began writing something like it on paper, but it was very random. I didn’t know where it was going. I had a couple nice sections that had long melody notes held out by the right hand, while this 8th note texture was happening underneath. I also liked the sound of the 8th note texture without held melody notes over it. So a day later, I wrote a section like that. I decided that section could happen before, between, and after the two sections I wrote first that had the long melody notes, and then the form emerged. I suppose it’s like a Rondo form again. ABACA. I enjoyed learning to play this one. I expect that it will sound pretty random to you, until you hear it a few times.

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26.) Pinus rigida : Endurance

Hello Dearest Listeners/Readers,

The 26th song of the Plant Songs project is entitled Pinus rigida : Endurance.

If you’re able, willing, interested, and you’d like to give me a gift, I’d like you to clear your schedule for 12 minutes and listen to this piece without doing anything else. Ideally you’d have good speakers, or better-yet good headphones. Listen without doing other things. Lay down. Close your eyes if you’d like. Wait until the piece is done, and take a moment of pause, before you read the essay that follows. Thanks.








Ok. You made it through. I’d love to know your reaction to it.





Now I’ll tell you what I was going for with this piece, starting with some history. I think it was November or December of 2007. I was browsing through CDs at the Downtown Music Gallery, which was then located on the Bowery in New York City. It was one of just a few remaining record stores. It’s still going actually, now located in a basement in Chinatown. It’s a store that specializes in avant-garde jazz and experimental music, and its narrow specialty is probably why it’s still open. Bruce Lee Gallanter, the owner, is a hero of the scene - speaking of endurance. Bruce’s love of music of many kinds is very inspiring.

I was in the store browsing, when I noticed the track they had playing in the store. It consisted of slow-repeating piano chords that were changing very subtly. After a few minutes, I kept thinking that it was going to change or develop into something different. It didn’t. It kept on with the same idea the entire time I was in the store - probably about 20-30 minutes. Whoa. What is happening! Bruce said it was drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey’s new album That / Not and this track was his tribute to Morton Feldman. I didn’t buy the record that day I’m embarrassed to say, but I did a few weeks later. My experience hearing Tyshawn’s piece that day certainly aroused my curiosity about Morton Feldman, whom I didn’t know much about.

A few days later I hit up the NY Public Library at Lincoln Center which had a vast library of CDs that you could borrow. I borrowed all the Morton Feldman records I could find. Later that week I was riding the bus back to NYC from Park Ridge NJ, where I taught piano lessons once a week back in those days. I had some beefy sound-isolating headphones, made for drummers to use while they practiced along with records. As we rolled through New Jersey, I listened to the record of Morton Feldman’s piece For Bunita Marcus recorded by pianist Markus Hinterhäuser. I remember it was December because people had Christmas lights up. This was a completely life-changing experience. The combination of hearing Tyshawn’s record, getting curious about Morton Feldman, and then listening to this piece on that bus ride, absolutely changed the way that I heard the piano. It opened up a world of piano overtones by which I became completely obsessed. Much of my work afterward for years was exploring the piano’s overtones and ability to blend sustained sounds.

My favorite Feldman pieces became For Bunita Marcus, Triadic Memories (both for solo piano), and String Quartet No. 2, which is a single-movement piece that last for over six hours! Again, speaking of endurance. You’ve gotta train for performing that. Concentration aside, I’d have to learn how to be hydrated and yet not need to urinate for more than 6 hours! The piano pieces have a lot to do with overtones and blended sustained sounds as I was writing about above, and the quartet has a lot to do with repeats, and scale (6 hours of it is much different than 20 minutes of it), and rhythmic augmentation. I wrote about back in 2013 in a blog post called Recordings and Memory Satisfaction. I became deeply interested in these things and used them a lot in my compositions. You can hear it on my 2010 trio record Magnolia, particularly on the track Time Canvas (which is titled after a section of Feldman’s book of writings Give Me Regards to Eighth Street), and you can hear it in many of the Bagatelles for Trio (2012).



Last Friday I hiked to the Pinus rigida / Pitch Pine grove up on the mountain. I’m drawn to these pines. I’ve been visiting them weekly this year. I have a feeling that there is something about them that is very important for me. They’ve been “calling” me. It’s now been a year since I started my hiking routine of going up the Pocket Rd. trail three times a week. From the beginning, I headed for the Pitch Pines. On most days, when I limit myself to a twenty minute ascent, I don’t make it all the way to them, but it’s interesting that I naturally went that way over and over again. I have a video of the first time I made it to the Pitch Pine Grove. It was March 11, 2024. I believe I had been doing the hiking routine for a week or two at that point, and on that particular day I took a little more time to continue up to the peak, which doesn’t officially have a name. I’m naming it Pitch Peak. There is a nice rock scramble that you have to climb before you reach Pitch Peak and some great views. You can look across and see the reservoir, and you get sprawling views of the Hudson Valley, all the way up to the Catskill Mountains.

Perhaps the feeling that came up about 16th months ago, that I needed to exercise my heart, was the Pitch Pines calling me. Maybe they called me to Beacon ten years ago. Maybe they called me to NYC in 2002. Maybe they called me into being born. Ha! Maybe, maybe not.

I don’t know the age of the Pinus rigida trees up there. All the trees, the Pitch Pines, and the many Quercus ilicifolia / Bear Oak trees up there are all very small, but I don’t think they’re young. Most are 15 feet or under, I assume because of the harsh growing conditions: rocky soil high on the hilltops where rain water runs off quickly, high winds, cold temperatures. There are many winter days when the trees at the top of the mountain are sparkling white with a thick layer of frost. Assuming the trees have always been on the small size because of the harsh growing conditions, I question if there was any logging done on the peaks in the Hudson Highlands. Would it have been worth the trouble to harvest such small trees? There is a lot of multi-trunk red oaks on the hillsides, and according to Tom Wessels, that’s good evidence of logging. When a tree is cut, often sprouts will regrow from the stump, and usually two or three win out, resulting in a tree with two or three main trunks. I’ve located two Pinus rigida in my neighborhood, down here around 220 feet in elevation and richer bottomland soil, and they’re both much taller than those up on Pitch Peak - around 40 feet.

So last Friday I went to Pitch Peak. Near the white trial and red trail junction, there’s a nice flat boulder right under one of the larger Pitch Pines. I laid on my back on this boulder for 15 minutes. It was cold and I was sweaty from the rapid ascent, and I had to get home to teach a lesson, so I couldn’t stay longer on this day. There were some gusty winds, although they were really mild considering what it must be like often times. The trees swayed and they whistled in the wind. Even on very calm days, these trees make a breathy whistling sound, which is very noticeable. As my Pitch Pine “dream time” was ending, I had a thought of how much these trees endure in these harsh growing conditions.

When I returned home, before teaching my lesson, I improvised what you hear in the first three measures of Pinus rigida : Endurance. Right away I had the idea that it could become a Feldman-inspired piece, something sustained, slow, repetitive, and ringing over-tone-based. After some experimentation, the piece took shape to what it is. There is some fairly rigid (rigida!) architecture to the piece, which you may enjoying trying to figure out, either by listening, or analyzing the score, or both. I thought the piece worked perfectly for a song about endurance and trees. For me the texture matches a the time scale of a slow-growing tree, and depending on how you felt about the piece, you might have needed some real endurance to listen through it once.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for reading this long post.

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25.) Merging

Greetings Thawing Beings!

The 25th song in the Plant Songs Project is titled Merging. 

I was improvising on Saturday and found the idea of what is heard in the introduction.  Very quickly the melody came to me - kind of a minimalist theme with lots of space.  I liked it. 

As I found the rest of the song a form emerged that I could describe as a Rondo form and/or a modified blues form.  The form of this song actually brought to mind a comparison of the two that had never occurred to me before.  

Someone told me once that Herbie Hancock said that all songs could be boiled down to either the blues form or the Rhythm changes form.  For those that are unfamiliar, Rhythm Changes refers to the harmonic structure of George Gershwin’s song I Got Rhythm.  There are hundreds of melodies in the jazz canon written over the I Got Rhythm chord progression, which we refer to as“Rhythm Changes”. It’s an AABA form.  So all the AABA songs out there might be compared to Rhythm Changes.

When you look at the basic harmonic structure of the 12-bar blues form, you have the following: I - IV - I - V - I. If you call the I chord “A”, the IV chord “B”, and the V chord “C”, then we have ABACA form, which is like a mini Rondo form. Rondo form is essentially ABACADA…on and on as long as you want. Basically you’re returning to an original theme over and over again with sections of different material between that theme.

This is the form of Merging; rondo form, but also a stretched out blues form. Measures 1 to 16 represent I and A, measures 17-21 represent IV and B, 22-29 I (A), 30-43 V (C), and 44-51 I (A). All together it’s ABACA.

I agree with Herbie. It’s fun to look a song and see how it resembles a blues or a rhythm changes. Sonata form is ABA and traditionally that first A is repeated, so AABA. A traditional performance of a jazz song is melody, solos, melody. The melody could represent A, the solos B (the development), and the return to the melody is A again, so ABA, not to far off. The only exception I can easily think of are the great American songbook tunes that are in two large sections, like Just Friends, or There Will Never Be Another You. Maybe these came out of Binary form, which was commonly used in the Baroque period of classical music..

I remember hearing a solo piano concert by Matthew Shipp in which he played a rendition of My Funny Valentine. He played 8 bars of the theme, then improvised freely, then the next 8 bars of the theme, then improvised, on and on. It occurred to me that he was doing a Rondo form, which was kind of rare in jazz. The friend I was with found it annoying, but I found it intriguing. It got me thinking, and a couple years later I would compose and record Bagatelles For Trio, which was largely about taking classical forms and applying them to jazz. The fourth Bagatelle is in Rondo form.

Back to Merging. I had recently been thinking about how life involves a lot of “merging”. Ten years ago we “merged” with life in Beacon, NY. Other friends were also merging with Beacon life right at the same time. Others had merged with it a few years earlier. They allowed us in, and we became part of the community. Some have exited Beacon life now and moved away, and many more have merged with it in more recent years. I’ve recently merged strongly with the Mount Beacon ecosystem, establishing my hiking habit and getting to know that ecosystem while it gets to know me. My wife Akiko and I merged together back in 2004 and we really merged hard, so much that we’ve remained side by side on the road of life for 21 years now. And our daughter Miya rapidly merged with our lives in 2019 and is right now in the stage of being very close and dependent. Later she will become more independent and go farther away, but will still be merged with us in some way. My piano students merge with me, some for ten or twelve years before they exit and merge into the next stage of their lives. Different communities such as my music major friends at UW-Eau Claire, my Manhattan School of Music friends, the sub scene of the NYC jazz scene that I was a part of, and the eco/gardening scene of Beacon, and many more, can all be viewed as mergings. Some last longer than others, but they all have left a mark. I am who I am today because of all of these periods of merging into different communities for a time. I merged into conscious life on Earth, and I will exit eventually. It’s nice being here on Earth at this time - pretty cool to be on this planet at the same time as pianos, for example. I could go on and on with this, and I will as I go about my days, until something merges into my life that needs some immediate attention for a time.

I hope you enjoy Merging. Thanks for being with me.

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24.) Johnny Joe Mockingbird

Hi Folks,

The 24th song in the Plant Songs project is called Johnny Joe Mockingbird.

I was away for the long weekend, spending time with my parents down in the Rio Grande Valley. It was a great time. But it meant that I got a late start in beginning this piece. Happily, I was able to catch the idea and get it worked out entirely on Tuesday. It’s got an AABA form plus a coda, nothing too unusual, and in my ear it’s got a pretty positive sound.

The title of this one has some fun stuff about it. I am currently reading Evan T. Pritchard’s book Bird Medicine. Pritchard is a Native American scholar and a descendant of the Mi’kmaq people. The book is full of stories about birds, many of them involving death; often a bird will appear to someone at the moment of a loved one’s death, or sometimes before or after. After reading many of these encounters in the book, I remembered one instance that happened to me:

We moved to Beacon in late July 2015. The first 6 weeks or so were an intense, but fun, period of renovating the house and unpacking. After finally settling in and getting into our routine, I noticed some strange behavior from a Northern Mockingbird. This bird was around for something like three weeks, sitting in the neighbor’s hedge across the street, staring at me through our kitchen window. Possibly aside from the piano, the kitchen is where I spend most of my waking hours. In addition to home cooking I do a lot of homesteader activities like fermentation, bread baking, and food processing. I like having a hand in my food as much as I reasonably can. My wife Akiko probably thinks I tip into the unreasonable in this area, and I can’t blame her for thinking that. These activities get me in front of the kitchen window doing dishes often. Over this three-week period I observed this Mockingbird staring at me as I did the dishes. When a car approached the bird would duck down into the hedge, then pop up after the car had passed and resume staring at me. After a day or two if this, I had the notion that this bird was Mr. Joseph, the previous owner of the house checking in to see what we were up to in his old house .

Our house was built in the sometime in the late 1870s or early 1880s. My curiosity led me to research our property on the internet and at the Beacon Historical Society. I learned that we were just the third owners of the house; pretty remarkable for a house this old. I took it as a very good sign; that we had moved into a place that had good energy. I’m happy to say that we’ve put down some hard roots here in the last ten years, figuratively and literally! The Tallmadge’s had built the house, then the Joseph’s moved in the 1950s if my memory serves me correctly. One of the Joseph’s told me that our house was originally a chicken coop. The beams of our house go different directions in different rooms, which supports such a claim. It’s a gnarly hodgepodge construction that has been added onto at least three times, possibly more.

John Joseph worked for the US Postal Service (so did I, back in college), had an excavating business, which continues to be operated today by his kids. His wife Jeanne was an avid gardener (as am I). I heard one of my neighbors refer to Mr. Joseph as “John Joe”. With all this on my mind from reading Evan Pritchard’s book, I thought Johnny Joe Mockingbird was a fun, albeit a little corny, title.

After I came up with this title, I realized that the rhythm of the melody was similar to the 20th song in this project, Dark-Eyed Junco, another song about birds. I thought maybe there was something inherently “bird” about this rhythm. For a moment I even considered scrapping the song or changing it radically as to avoid repeating myself, but then I thought that no, it’s okay for me to borrow from myself. I was explaining this small predicament to Vincent, a student of my mine at SUNY New Paltz, and he said, “Well it’s a mockingbird, right? So that’s not a problem. It’s imitating the other song.” Perfect! I hadn’t made that connection. Thanks, Vincent!

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23.) Love For Lovebug

Hello Good People,

The 23rd song of the Plant Songs Project is called Love For Lovebug.

This song is one I’ve been waiting for. I was waiting for one of them to be about our daughter Miya. One might think, “What’s the waiting for? Just write one for Miya already.” Well, I don’t feel like I’m very much in control of it you see. I think of myself as more of a means for what’s there in the ether to be birthed into a piece of music. The ideas are floating around and if I happen to be in the right place at the right time and I’m open, then I can catch the idea and go from there. So I’d been thinking for awhile that I want to express my love for Miya through a song, but I had to wait for the right idea to come.

This idea came last Friday night, after I had finished teaching lessons, after having chaperoned Miya’s kindergarten class on a trip to the aquarium in Norwalk, CT that day; not a time when I would expect to be in an open state to catch an idea. That’s the thing, you never know when they’ll show up - all one can do is be ready and be open, and then be willing to work when it shows up. I started improvising, and the idea of the this little three-note trill motif which is heard through out the piece just caught a hold of me. And I knew I was onto something because it wouldn’t let go. Little by little the form of the song began to take shape. Then after maybe 20 minutes of working, I suddenly realized this was the song for Miya, and I just burst into tears at that moment. It was a beautiful moment. I was full of gratitude that this song had finally come. I had a little cry, and continued on working, and pretty much finished it in that sitting. Afterward I went into the house and went about my usual evening stuff, cleaning up the kitchen and preparing food for the next day. Normally during those activities I like to listen to music, or watch some YouTube. But that night I did it all in silence, my heart filled by the experience I had had a little earlier out in the studio. I held back more tears as I told my wife Akiko that a song for Miya had come and that I had been waiting for it for so long.

For me, music has the ability to express emotions that are too big for words. Saying “I love you”, giving hugs, and looking after her isn’t enough to express my love for Miya. I’m so thankful to know that love. And the interesting thing is that I think the experience of this song is primarily for me. It’s for you too and obviously it’s for Miya. But I can’t say if it will be effective in communicating anything to anyone. I would like if you felt something when you heard this song, but it might not do anything for you. If it doesn’t, I’m okay with that because birthing this song was a huge moment for me, one I will not forget, and that’s enough. That alone was worth it. The deepest emotions around the love of my daughter were expressed as this song was written. Perhaps I will listen to it after some time and feel those emotions again as poignant as I did last Friday evening, but maybe not. And again, I’m just thankful to have experienced this. What a gift.

Experiences like this have come about over the years. They are variable in strength; big waves, small waves, and medium waves. Sometimes these great moments happen in concert in front of an audience, and that’s a wonderful feeling. But the most memorable of these moments for me are when I’ve been alone at the piano. All of the songs in the Plant Songs project have been special moments, some stronger than others. Love For Lovebug feels like the strongest one to come about in a while. I teach a lot of piano lessons. If just one of my students is able to someday have an experience like this - an experience of say a washing of the soul via music-making, then it will all have been worth it. I’m positive that experiences like this can be had via different art forms, but probably only after years of careful devoted practice in a particular medium. Did I know about such moments when I practiced piano for endless hours for years and years? I must have known deep down, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

I hope you enjoy Love For Lovebug. Thanks for being here.

Lovebug and I on the school bus on the way to the Aquarium, on the same day that Love for Lovebug was composed.


22.) Tracks

Hello Friends,

The 22nd song in the Plant Songs series is entitled Tracks.

This one is a melody and bassline / countermelody written over the 12-bar blues form. It’s been awhile since I’ve written a 12-bar blues. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the 12-bar blues is a ubiquitous form that’s used in jazz, blues, rock, and more. There are probably more 12-bar blues compositions than any other form in the jazz canon. It’s kind of a fun familiar form that musicians know and understand well. Remember in Back To The Future when Marty sat in with Marvin Berry’s band at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance in 1955? Before they started playing Johnny B Goode he said to the band, “Alright, this is the blues riff in B. Watch me for the changes, and try to keep up.” He was talking about the 12-bar blues form. It was actually in B-flat. I wonder if it was written as “B-flat” in the script and he messed up.

I digress. Since the 12-bar blues is so common, my instinct is to mess with it a little. We don’t need another plain old blues, so I was thinking “be a little weird” when I wrote this melody. I would site the music of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Warne Marsh as an influence. Their songs had such odd phrasing and odd note choices, and are so fun. The weirdness of my melody carried into the improvisation section, at least that was my intention. I didn’t want to go into a “normal” version of the blues after my weird melody. Part of the problem of the 12-bar blues in jazz circles is that many musicians play the same bebop or post-bop lines over any 12-bar blues, disregarding the themes that the melody contained. In my opinion it’s a missed opportunity when someone plays Thelonious Monk’s Misterioso and then plays a solo that doesn’t take that amazing thematic melody into account.

The snowfalls we’ve had this winter have provided me with some interesting animal track viewing. There have been several times that I’ve been breaking the trail on Mount Beacon and have been able to see lots of animal tracks. I’ve seen tracks of deer, squirrel, mouse, vole, and either fox or coyote. Possibly bobcat too. And after the snow last Sunday evening, our yard was full of all kinds of tracks on Monday morning. I think there were kitty-cat, squirrel, raccoon, fox, and skunk tracks. We get a lot of animal activity in our yard because of our chicken operation. I dump all our kitchen scraps, and the scraps of several neighbors in our chicken yard. During a cold winter the ground freezes, the scraps freeze and it tends to pile up a little and it can attract critters. During the warm season if the scraps accumulate, I can pile them all up into compost piles and that keeps it from turning into a critter party.

Animal tracks really have nothing to do with this song. But the active nature of the melody might reflect wild animal activity enough so that when I was scratching my head trying to think of a title, my recent sightings of animal tracks came to mind. I hope you enjoy Tracks.

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21.) Slow Down

Hello Peaceful People,

The 21st song of the Plant Songs project is called Slow Down.

So I’ve kept a little secret from you. Song number 19, Shine (For Roswell Rudd) has lyrics. They’re personal and mantra-like and I wrote them to help me in a certain situation in my life. I’m still going to keep those lyrics to myself. I like to share a lot, but I also want to keep some things a little mysterious too - to keep you wondering. It turns out through, that those lyrics and that song have been a tremendous help in that particualar situation, and I think I may have discovered a new therapeutic use for my music. Creating and consuming music has always been therapeutic for me, but this might be next level. This could become a habit.

With that success, I thought it would be fun to do another song with lyrics, to help with another issue. This time, the lyrics are less mantra-like and more like an ordinary song. But they’re a message to myself to slow down, not rush, and notice things. Of course, there’s no avoiding being in a rush from time to time. But I often find myself rushing from activity to activity for no good reason. So here’s a song for me to sing to myself when I catch myself in a hurry.

Before you get too excited, no, I didn’t sing for my recording. I’m not too confident in my singing, although someday I’d like to be. I need more voice lessons. However you can click on PDF SCORE below to view the sheet music which has the lyrics on it. I don’t have a lot of practice writing lyrics, and they’re probably not great. But that’s okay. They’re really just to help me slow down in my life.

Interestingly, the lyrics did have a pretty profound effect on the composition process. First, I wrote about half of the lyrics before I wrote any music. I’ve never done that before and it was interesting. I found myself composing variations in the theme to accommodate the lyrics. I think it actually has a nice effect on the phrasing, just listening instrumentally. I heard an interview with Bruce Hornsby in which he said he always starts with lyrics, and composes the music afterward. Interesting! I’m sure others do that too, but as a lyrics-last kind of person, it seemed pretty strange to me. It’s nice to try something new.

After I had some lyrics, I heard them constructed into a melody. Then I got a little stuck figuring out what harmony I wanted to go with that melody. Finally I found something I liked, what you hear during the first four measures. Then the next four measures came pretty quickly. Then I was really stuck on where to go next. I didn’t really know what key I was in. I still don’t know what key this song is in. I know where it ends up, but it ends up in many places along the way. So there’s some nice mystery there. We don’t always need to know everything.

Thanks for listening. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this song can also help you slow down when you need to.

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20.) Dark-Eyed Junco

Greetings Embracers of the Cold!

The 20th song in the Plant Songs series is called Dark-Eyed Junco.

July 2025 marks ten years since we’ve lived on our property here in Beacon. The first thing I planted was red raspberries in August of that year, then a few native perennials right around the same time. I remember planting Echinacea purpurea, and some Monarda. Since then I’ve continued to plant a combination of food plants, medicinal plants, and native plants to feed wildlife. Ten years in, many plants and many hours (mostly joyous) later, the benefits of all this work are really starting to shine.

This winter I’m noticing a lot of birds feeding on the seeds of last season’s plants. I’m in the habit of leaving the dried stalks of the herbaceous perennials, as well as any seeds or fruit on our native shrubs, standing over the winter. It’s said that insects can over winter in the hollow stems of many of these plants, and also birds can eat the seeds and fruit.

We constantly have a flock of sparrows, house finches, and starlings living off of our chicken system, gleaning anything they can from the chicken yard. This is a little annoying, but I mostly welcome their contributions. As Karl Hammer of Vermont Compost Company says of his operation, we too are “multi-manurial”.

Other wild birds that I’ve observed a lot this winter are Tufted Titmouse / Baeolophus bicolor, mostly eating the seeds of our Vernonia novaborecensis / New York Ironweed, Carolina Wren / Thryothorus ludovicianus, and Dark-Eyed Junco / Junco hyemelis. I see the Juncos almost everyday. Today I saw one hanging out on the Physocarpus opulifolius / Ninebark, just outside the window of the studio. It came by as I was teaching a lesson, just after I had recorded this song.

Of all the birds I’ve observed this winter, I think Dark-Eyed Junco has the most entertaining common name. It sounds like something my younger brother Jake would’ve called me in attempt to insult me when we were kids. “You old dark-eyed junco!” he would’ve said with one eye partially closed.

Musicially, Dark-Eyed Junco is a not too complicated. It uses the B-flat natural minor scale almost exclusively. I came up with a vague idea of what you hear at the beginning - a groove with some repetitive notes - almost more like a guitar part. I refined it a little, and figured out the order of the bass notes that I wanted. Then came the task of writing a melody over it. As I worked on the melody, the choice came up of how repetitive to be, both rhythmically and pitch-wise. I opted for more repetition this time, wondering if it might end up being a little catchier that way. I don’t think I have a way of knowing if that’s the case or not, unless I were to forget about it for a couple years, and then listen again. I tend to lose some objectivity during the composing process. I especially remember this happening while arranging for the 24 Standards project; working out all the chord voicings and countermelodies, using a lot of chromaticism, it was really easy to get caught up going down a path into weirdness, losing objectivity. And then I’d have to take a day or two off and come back to it to really hear it for what it was.

Anyway, Dark-Eyed Junco was a fun song to practice. I think more time with it would inspire some different choices in the pitches I use in my improvisation. First I was content to stick with a B-flat natural minor scale, which is almost exclusively what you hear on this recording. But I was starting to get tired of it and feeling ready to explore some other choices.

Hope you’re staying warm during the coldest cold snap we’ve had here since we’ve lived in Beacon. Remember, it’s good for us to feel the cold sometimes. Thanks for listening and reading!

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19.) Shine (For Roswell Rudd)

Greetings!

The 19th song of the Plant Songs Series is called Shine (For Roswell Rudd). This is a very simple song - a diatonic melody with pretty common chords. It’s amazing how much can be done with those commonly-used elements.

Last week when I was nearing the end of my hike on the mountain, I felt a “nudge”. Something caused me to look sharply to my left as I was walking at a pretty brisk pace. I stopped and looked and there before me was a large Liriondendron tulipifera / Tulip Tree. It was a nice one, with a perfectly straight trunk reaching for the sky - like some that I described in the Liriodendron Lift post. These trees have become a favorite winter tree of mine.

This one was surrounding by other trees and I noticed on this windy day how the canopy of all these trees fit together like a puzzle as it blew in the wind. Forest trees do this a lot. Each tree goes toward the light looking for any sunlight it can find. It occurred to me then that it was both cooperation and competition at the same time. After smiling at this Liriodendron for a moment, I continued on down the trail and found myself thinking about Elders. Not necessarily Elderberry (but maybe), but Elders, as in old and wise beings.

Stephen Harrod Buhner, whose book Becoming Vegetalista is currently rocking my world, said, “ I began to wonder if there was a such thing as Old Growth humans. I decided there was and that I wanted to become one.” How great is that?

I began to think about Elders in my life. I don’t think any of Mount Beacon can be considered Old Growth forest, but certainly some of the Liriodendrons up there seem pretty old and wise to me. That one that nudged me was. So what is the definition of an Elder? For me an Elder would be a being with a lot of life experience and wisdom. I think you can be with an Elder human and learn things through conversation, but also without words being shared. I think someone might be an Elder for some people, but not others. I don’t think your relationship with your parents allows for them to become Elders for you, at least not for me. But I think your grandparents could be Elders for you. For me, an Elder is someone who’s done plenty of observing, reflecting, and probably hasn’t moved (as in moved to a new city) much in their life. I supposed there’s much more to it than that also. But it seems that there is much getting in the way of humans reaching Elderhood these days- disease, facebook, and cable news come to mind.

I thought about Elder humans that I have known in my life. And the one person that stands out as an Elder for me is the late Roswell Rudd. Roswell was a trombonist. He came to Manhattan School of Music and did a master class when I was there as a masters student. Roswell had a huge aperture; too big for most conservatory students I reckon. I don’t think most of us totally “got” him. But I remember he had us playing a hand-written Herbie Nichols piece - it was difficult to read and I was completely botching the notes. As we were playing, with a kind heart he said, “Yes, yes, beautiful wrong notes!” Years later I was doing a trio gig of my music at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I had set three of Basho’s haiku poems to music, and I had guest vocalist Sunny Kim sit in on this gig and sing the text. Sunny and Roswell were tight had collaborated and he showed up in the audience that night to listen. That was pretty cool!

Years later after having moved to Beacon, we were invited to a potluck. It was over in Kerhonkson. Roswell was there with his partner Verna, and we got to talking. I recited the above stories to him and Verna and we had a few laughs. I’m smiling, basking in this memory as I write this now. Verna started setting up some meetings with Roswell and me. I went out to their place in Kerhonkson and we played duo every 3-4 weeks. Later we had bassist Jennifer Maidman join us for a few sessions. I can’t tell you how special that time was, and I don’t think I fully realized the wisdom he was passing onto me at the time. When we talked he would do a lot of reflecting back what he heard me say, similar to what members of a congregation might do listening to a preacher. Roswell was an Old Growth person. You heard the whole history of music in each note he played, and definitely the whole history of his life. His talking was similarly filled with meaning, slow, to the point, but also light-hearted. We played together for about a year and a half before he passed away in December of 2017. What a gift it was to know him and spend this time with him, especially during that time, which was a time of musical uncertainty for me.

Playing with Roswell in 2017, wisdom emanating toward me from the bell of his horn.


Musicians, maybe all musicians, but definitely jazz musicians, have special practice with their feeling sense. There’s a lot of non-thinking in the midst of deep listening - FEELING - going on during a performance, at least I believe that’s what’s going on in the best moments. I’m realizing now that this feeling practice in music is helping me find that sense in many areas of my life. It’s one reason why I feel a natural connection to musicians. Another reason is that most of us have gone through years (at least 4 to 6 years?) of intense practice in solitude, working on our craft, for hours upon hours each day with little concern for anything else, which I believe is required for most jazz musicians to reach competency. These shared experiences are felt among musicians and provide us with a special connection.

I’m reminded of my pal and extraordinary guitarist composer Jesse Lewis. Around a year ago he was playing at Quinn’s here in Beacon and I went to listen. It had been a few years since we’d been in touch at that time. During the break we sat together and mostly just smiled in silence together. Jesse and I have shared lots of feeling together over the years and there wasn’t much need for words that night. The smiling said it all.

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18.) In The Eye

Greetings and Happy 2025!

The 18th song in the series is called In The Eye.

Throughout the Plant Songs project, my subject matter has largely been celebratory and positive. I think that’s mostly because the lifestyle habits that I’ve cultivated, as well as good fortune, have provided me with much to celebrate and much I want to share with you. The current relationship I have with music and the music-making process is also in a good place right now, which also contributes to this positivity. But mostly it just feels better to share the positives in today’s world.

But over the years piano playing and composing has often been a cathartic activity for me; wonderfully so, especially when I need to work through something upsetting. It’s one nice thing about being a musician. I can channel unpleasant feelings through the piano, releasing them from myself, and at least without lyrics, there’s very little chance of my expression hurting someone else’s feelings.

Composing, practicing, recording, sharing, and listening back to In The Eye, were all cathartic for me. The process went about as follows: As I was at the piano improvising, searching for a germ of an idea around which I would compose a piece, I came upon a four-chord progression that I liked. It was slow and had kind of a sad sound in my opinion. I worked with it for a while, and eventually came up with another progression that could compliment it, also four chords, also sad. I immediately thought of something I observed on December 21st at a Christmas Party gig that I had been thinking about occasionally since. I won’t tell you exactly what it was because I don’t want to complain here, and it’s probably beside the point anyway. But it was something that bothered me and made me a little depressed. When I attached this emotion to my two progressions, playing them felt good. I had a “yesssss” feeling.

Next it was time to compose a melody and solidify the form. I was in no rush, so I let the progressions stew for a day or two. When I returned to the work, I realized one of the progressions was very similar to a Sufjan Stevens song. My progression was in a different meter than Sufjan’s, and I debated continuing with it. It’s not against the law to copy chord progressions, so I wouldn’t have been breaking the rules by continuing with it. But ultimately I decided it was too similar for my own satisfaction, so I abandoned it. Then I was looking for something to precede the remaining progression, but eventually came to accept it as the beginning of the song, as I began to compose the melody.

Eventually I had twelve bars of this progressions with melody added when I felt that a new progression wanted to come next. Eventually I found four new chords and they let me to a place where I could repeat the chords of the opening progression, except they were transposed up a fourth, and had a slight modification that could lead nicely back to the original progression in the original key. I liked it, and I composed more melody, and retrofit some of the previously written melody to fit the transposition and return to the original progression. After that I played through the form a couple times to be sure it was how it wanted to be; it was. Next I slapped a title onto it; a title that references the depressing observation I spoke about earlier, and there you have it.

As I mentioned, the whole process was cathartic. Interestingly, during the recording process of many of the Plant Songs, including this one, I’ve noticed that too much emoting with my face and body movements can cause me to make technical mistakes. This song was slow and easy enough that it didn’t happen too much. But some of the others, especially the more difficult-to-play ones, improved a lot when I decided to cultivate some stillness; and I don’t hear those performances as sounding less emotional when I listen back to them, so I might be on to something. I’ll continue to observe and experiment with that going forward.

I recorded this yesterday (Tuesday), and this morning (Wednesday) I had another difficult thing happen that caused me some strife. But on my hike up Mount Beacon just after said difficulty, I was hearing In The Eye in my head and once again it helped to make me feel better. I’m thankful for music.

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17.) Prelude (To Many Things)

Greetings Anticipators of Light!

The seventeenth piece in the Plant Songs project is entitled Prelude (To Many Things). This is a bit of a bonus song, as I wasn’t expecting to publish this week. But once again was able to get it done in the spare time I found.

The song started as an improvisation, as many of them do. I improvised the first measure, then the progression pretty much wrote itself afterward. It immediately started sounding like a prelude to me; let’s say a terribly anemic imitation of a Bach Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, but with a little modernized rhythm. First I just had the eighth note line. I thought of trying to sing a long-note melody over it, but then I found I could play said melody instead; I think that worked out better for me and you.

The quintuplets were a lot of fun to work on. I don’t think of myself as one of the heavy rhythm cats who eats stuff like quintuplets for breakfast, and I’m not sure all of mine in this recording were totally precise. But I really enjoyed trying and I’m definitely not worse at them now.

I used the title “Prelude” because the piece reminded me of a classical prelude, as I mentioned above. Then I got to thinking about it a little more and added the subtitle. “Prelude” means a “lude” before something, and I think many people are thinking of things to come as we wrap up 2024 and move to 2025. For me it’s many things, including the anticipation of the next growing season. In some ways this is my favorite time of year for gardening, when I’m ordering seeds, planning beds, and imagining the abundance without any pests, disease, or drought. I’m hopeful for some nice wintery weather. Then I’m greatly looking forward to the return of longer days, and the unfolding of Spring, especially as I will observe it on Mount Beacon during my hiking routine. Of course I’m looking forward to the continued growth of our daughter, which has been so fun to witness. And I’m looking forward to continuing with the Plant Songs project. Who knows what songs are to come yet.

Thanks for reading and listening. Wishing you continued happiness and joy!

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16.) Solisinframons

Hello Solstice Superheroes!

The sixteenth song in the Plant Songs Project is entitled Solisinframons. What the heck is that word you ask? I’ll explain later.

First a little about the song: This is what could be called a minimalist composition. Not necessarily minimalist like the style that was popularized in the second half of the 20th century. But simply just that there’s not much to it. It’s a simple chord progression in G-flat major; all diatonic (no borrowed chords), and all of my improvisation stays within the G-flat major scale as well. It’s very slow. I’ve written a hand full of songs like this over the years. Sometimes it’s nice to just set the stage and let the improvisation be the bulk of the performance.

2025 will mark ten years since we’ve lived in Beacon, NY. Many of you know that I’m an avid gardener and have studied Permaculture and have tried to implement the ethics and principles of Permaculture on our little property. It’s been great fun and fulfilling. One of the most important of the Permaculture principle is “Observe and Interact”. It’s recommended that you spend an entire year observing a property before implementing any major design choices, so you have an understanding of things like sun, shade, wind, and water patterns and are more likely to put design elements in the appropriate places.

Ten years in, I’m still observing, and noticing new patterns and learning new things about the property. How wonderful. Over the years I’ve noticed that, being located northwest of Mount Beacon, we have a period of time in the Fall and Winter during which the sun rises behind Mount Beacon and is only visible after it eclipses the North Peak. That means at this time of year, we only get direct sunlight on the property from about 9:40am. At other times, it follows above the contour of the North Peak, rising between it and Lambs Hill, and provides direct sun much earlier. In the height of summer, the early sun rise happens much further north on the horizon, and might miss the Hudson Highlands mountain range all together.

So this is the dark time of year. If you go to a higher elevation spot in Beacon around 7:30 or 8am and look west over the Hudson River, you can see direct sunlight shining on Newburgh, and even the western part of Beacon while you yourself might be in the shadow of the Highlands. I had been thinking about this phenomenon recently, and first I thought that I’d like to find the day that we first get direct sunlight in the yard in the early morning - when the sun rising in the hollow between North Mount Beacon and Lamb’s Hill - and have a celebration that day. I brought this up to my brother Jake, and he said that actually we need some kind of celebration for the dark times, because that’s when we need to be uplifted. It would be similar to how we celebrate Christmas just after the Winter Solstice, and many religions have holidays around the same time.

After some contemplation, I agreed with my brother that we should do something to brighten our world during this period of time. So we decorated one of those candles that are in a glass jar. And I came up with a Latin name for this period of time: Solisinframons. Solis = sun, infra = below, and mons = mountain. Then the day, and the whole period of time, that the sun rises adjacent to the mountain instead of behind it we’ll call Solisupramons. “Supra” meaning “above”. My daughter and I decorated the candle with acrylic markers and we’ve been lighting it during breakfast. It’s really been enjoyable, and has certainly brightened our mornings.

Interestingly, we could all be celebrating Solisinframons in our neighborhood. But the dates are highly localized. Just a few doors down from us and up the hill on Robinson Street gets the direct morning sun a few minutes earlier than us. They’ll have a shorter period of Solisinframons, although I’m not sure by how much. In Spring of 2025 I’ll be documenting the day in which we get the early morning direct sun. I’m guessing it will be early February, but I’m really not sure. Then in Fall 2025, I’ll be looking for the date the Solisinframons begins, my guess in early to mid-November.

To me the song Solisinframons reflects a time of coziness, of huddling together, of contemplation, and of planning for the next years growing season. I hope you enjoy it.

On a side note, I’m planning on taking the next two weeks off from the project as I had planned at the onset. Who knows, if something comes about, maybe I’ll continue through the break. But I expect to not publish for next two weeks. Happy Holidays!

Our Solisinframons candle.

The sunrise behind Mount Beacon on December 18th at 8:20am. It will be almost an hour and a half before we’re out of the shadow.



15.) Albedo

Greetings Fellow Navigators of Small Day Length!

The Fifteenth song of the Plant Songs series is called Albedo. Albedo is a term for light reflecting off of a surface, often used in reference to sunlight reflecting off of snow-covered ground. Snow cover on a sunny day greatly amplifies the brightness. Scientists have measured it. The lack of albedo in a Hudson Valley Winter is quite challenging for this Minnesota boy, who was used to more or less constant snow cover from December through March. I think I might remember just one brown Christmas from those days. I miss Minnesota winter, which reliably offered regular sledding, skating, cross country skiing, ice fishing, etc. I took it for granted. Living in Beacon, I jump at any chance for those winter activities. When it snows in the evening I get my skis out and go around the block a few times before the plow comes through, if I can beat it. When Winter Park at Fahnestock State Park opens (every two or three years when the conditions warrant it), I’m sure to take advantage.

However, I’ve enjoyed some snow cover in recent weeks up on Mount Beacon. My hiking practice keeps surprising me with new joys. Last Friday I had a little extra time, and made my way up to the Fire Monument on the north peak of Mount Beacon at 1526 feet above sea level. There was still about 4 inches of snow up there, while there was none back at home, at a 230 or so feet above sea level. The sun was shining beautifully. And oh did I take it in. It was cold that morning. Lovely cold on my face, bright sun reflecting off of the snow, and views of Lamb Hill and the valley below. Yea for photons!

The view looking north from the north summit of Mount Beacon on December 6, 2024.

Mount Beacon Reservoir on December 6, 2024.



I’d like to discuss some theoretical elements of this song. The idea for the song was discovered through in improvisation that was similar to what became the introduction of Albedo. I began to write some melody phrases, and remembered an interesting concept that I had recently happened upon with one of my composition students at SUNY New Paltz. It’s the idea of adding a note or two to a common scale. I thought it would make for some interesting melodic shapes and sounds. Some music that has inspired this sound out of me recently includes Ginastera’s Danzas Creoles, as well as the music of Ravi Shankar and Tigran Hamasyan - music that has surprising melodic choices.

In Albedo I used a B-flat natural minor scale, but added the major seventh (A natural) and the augmented fourth (E natural). The result is a scale with the following pitches [Bb C Db Eb E F Gb Ab A]. Minor scales have traditionally been altered by composers to create harmonic and melodic tension and beauty. But it usually would involve moving one of the notes (e.g. moving the minor seventh up a half step to the major seventh to create a harmonic minor scale) rather than adding additional notes - at least that’s the way I’ve understood it. But when I ADD the E natural and A natural to the Bb minor scale and consider all the notes part of the scale together, it’s really fun to see what possibilities that creates melodically and especially harmonically. In that case, all the chords of this song are diatonic (naturally occurring in the scale) including all the chords of the B section. Some interesting chords emerge, particularly the Amajor7. That’s a fun sound to play around with in a B-flat minor song.

It’s interesting to me to think about simplicity vs. complexity in regard to melody. The pop music of today has such simple and repetitive melodies. It’s nice. It gets you hooked quickly. But often it’s a short love affair for me. I might fall in love with those songs, but it doesn't last long. Whereas something with a more complicated melody like Albedo, or maybe a Charlie Parker tune might take awhile for me to fall in love with, but then it’s a longer lasting affair. I think that’s the kind of melody I’ve been writing more of these days, certainly in Albedo. I hope you enjoy it and maybe even fall in love with it this melody after a few listenings.

One very enjoyable thing for me about the Plant Songs project is how I fall in love with each composition during the process of writing it and recording it. There’s been a period of infatuation with every one of these compositions. I hope I don’t jinx myself by writing that. The love affair usually lasts until I get into the next song. It sounds egotistical to say I love my own work. We’re used to artists saying that they don’t ever consume their own work. Many actors say they don’t watch their films. But if I’m being honest with my work and creating it from the Heart, shouldn’t it be some of my favorite music to listen to? It’s true that I hear shortcomings - phrases that didn’t come out exactly right, or little glitches, usually during the improvisation section. I hear limitations in technique and conception. But I try to be kind to myself and I do also hear growth, which makes me feel good. And the whole process is a mystery. The fact that next week I’ll be working on something different - something that doesn’t exist at all right now, but will in seven to ten days - is nicely bewildering.

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14.) Little Bear

Greetings Human Beings! The fourteenth song of the Plant Songs project is called Little Bear.

I was planning to write some words about the style of this song, but I changed my mind, thinking that those words might interfere with you experiencing it for what it is. All I’ll say is that I strive to embrace diversity - diversity of musical styles, and even more so diversity of life. Maintaining diversity is a key element in us surviving on this planet. We’re seeing massive insect decline and they are foundational in our ecosystems. You can help stop mass extiction by planting native plants, removing invasive plants, avoiding herbicides and pesticides, leaving your leaves on the ground, converting lawn to garden, just to name a few. And protect cultural diversity by turning off the television and social media, cooking from scratch, maintaining appropriate family traditions and creating new ones, and making original art, just to name a few of those. Okay, I’m done being bossy.

Diversity is a benefit of a project like this. Because there will be many songs, there’s not much pressure on any one of them to have longevity. Therefore I can experiment and explore many styles. It’s not important to me for them to stand as unified body of work as Plant Songs. In the future I can pick handfuls of them to present unified statements in the form of concerts or albums.

Now I’d like to tell you the story about this title, and hold on to your hats, it’s a good one!

This morning I set out for my hike up and down Mount Beacon as I do three times a week. It was in the low 20s Fahrenheit this morning, the coldest hiking weather yet since I started this practice. It was also quite still, very little wind, and very little leaf material in the canopy to make any breeze audible. I hiked speedily up the trail, thinking about tasks that I had to do today. But even on the way up the trail today, I sensed a lot of special energy. It was one of those days that seemed ripe for some kind of special encounter.

I noticed that the ice formations in the brook had grown since Monday. Somehow they seemed to change the timbre of the flowing water. The ice at Rainbow Falls was particulalry beautiful. I proceeded up Lambs Hill until my twenty minute timer went off, at which time I plopped down on a rock, took a rest, had a drink, and looked in the direction of the sun, which shines beautifully on Lamb’s Hill in the morning. After catching my breath I did four cycles of 4-7-8 breathing, which I do regularly to calm myself and create awareness. Patches of snow were visible on the north-facing slopes that are seen from Lambs Hill. I noticed the stillness again. I heard an animal rustling the leaves nearby and I assumed it was a squirrel, which I’ve observed burying nuts often this Fall. I greeted the squirrel even though I didn’t see it, and began my descent back down the trail.

The descent proceeded normally except that everytthing seemed to be even more vibrant than usual. Maybe the cold had to do with it, or perhaps all the beings on the mountain were anticipating some weather coming. I reached the falls again and I splashed some ice water on my face as I do every time I descend past them. Remember that special energy the water has that I wrote about in the Flowform post a couple weeks ago? I want to be in contact with that, so a few splashes on my face gets the job done. I proceeded downward past the largest living Hemlock tree on the trail, then through the Hemlock Graveyard, over Slippery Rock, past Columbine Conglomerate and Relief Flat, all spots along the trail that I’ve named over the last year. I passed a nice Liriodendron, which I greeted as I usually do with arms in the air and a “yesssss”.

I continued past a big rock that I think is a glacial erratic, and I came to a spot on the trail that often has a stong energy to it. Several times I’ve had to stop in this area and acknowledge some kind of special presence. Today it was particularly strong. And I noticed that there was an absence of songbirds in this spot today. It’s an eerie feeling when you notice that. Something was up today. I stopped in my tracks. I stood and stared into the woods upslope. Then I sat down on a rock and made myself as still and quiet as I could. I sensed something. Then I heard some rustling of leaves. Another squirrel I thought at first. But no, this was different. And I actually noticed a different scent. Cool!

I waited what seemed like five minutes. It was probably only about 30-45 seconds. And then I saw the most peculiar thing. There was an exposed rock outcropping covered in moss. And I could just barely make out two cute paws on top of the ledge, then the creature slowly lifted its head up over the ledge to take a peek at me. It was a little bear! First I was extremely excited. Then I remembered stories about bear cubs and protective mama bears. And there was something very weird about a cub being out this time of year. Shouldn’t you be hibernating little bear? Suddenly feeling quite nervous about mama bear, I quickly snapped a photo from a distance, and as calmly as I could I hurried down the trail. I never saw mama bear. The photo isn’t too great, but rather than embed it in the blog, I thought it was best to upload a hi-resolution photo so that you can zoom in to see little bear. Click here to see the photo!

I hope you enjoy Little Bear!

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13.) The Ascent

Good Day Earthlings. Happy Thanksgiving to you. The thirteenth song of the Plant Songs Series is called The Ascent. When I started this project I had said that I’d give myself this week of Thanksgiving off. However, I found myself with enough spare time to get one written. It turned out to be a bit of a beastly song to record! But it was plenty of fun.

The nervous system is fascinating. There’s a phenomenon known as “red light syndrome”. This refers to musicians getting “freaked out” when the tapes are rolling. I remember reading about the great jazz pianist Bill Evans’ issues with it. I actually bought a CD box set of live bootleg recordings called The Secret Sessions in which Bill did not know he was being recorded. I don’t know, Bill always sounded great, so I can’t say that his playing on that box set was better than his other recordings.

I think I’ve been more aware of my nervous system as I’ve gotten older. I can be practicing a song and be totally relaxed. But the moment I press the record button there’s a pretty remarkable shift. There must be different chemicals being released at that moment. For the most part, I’m able to deal with it. I think I’ve done enough recording that I can usually perform in that state. Sometime, hopefully it even helps my focus. But focus is interesting for a musician, especially for an improvisor, perhaps.

It seems to me that there’s a sweet spot state of conciousness for musicians - a state where you’re fully aware, listening on many levels, but also NOT thinking much. Thinking, especially analytically, can really hinder an improvised performance. Instead you want to be in a feeling state. In this song, I found that it was the same during the written part of the performance. I had to practice this song a lot and it got to the point where my body knew how to do it, expcept for one thing: the left hand ostinato in this song is interrupted by an ascending phrase in the right hand, several times. At the very end of the form the ascending phrase happens again, but this time it goes farther up the piano, and requires a different fingering. So I had to be in a feeling state, but be aware enough to remember that fingering change for the end, otherwise I’d mess that up. It was an enjoyable challenge.

The title, The Ascent, is in reference to my Mount Beacon hiking routine (again). I ascend fast to get my heart rate up. I find that during most of the ascent I’m working out problems of life in my mind, thinking the thoughts that need to be thought, while also making a few observations along the way. It’s a busy and active state of mind during the ascent. I usually set a timer for twenty minutes. When I get to that mark, I take a break, take a drink, have a few breaths, then head down. Now my concousness shifts. Endorphines have been released. I’m observing much more and feeling my way down the trail. It’s a fantastic state. I’m feeling energies, essences, and love from my surroundings.

I hope you enjoy The Ascent. I’m a little surprised that this came out of me. It’s not the first thing I’d expect out of me. And I’m surprised that there have been more medium and fast tempos coming out of me. When I started the Plant Songs project, I was gearing up to defend myself from myself about all the slow songs I would be writing. But as always, these projects go their own way and I’ve now released six songs in a row that are not ballads, at least in my mind. Go figure.

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12.) Flowform

Greetings Human Beings! The twelfth song of the Plant Songs project is called Flowform.

If you’ve been reading this blog, or if you’re a friend a mine, you might know that I’ve got a ritual of hiking the Pocket Road trail on Mount Beacon three times a week. I’ve been doing it since late February. It’s heart exercise, but much more than just cardio exercise, which was my original reason for starting the practice. It’s developed into Heart exercise, into Feeling exercise, much more of a spiritual practice.

Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) was the originator/propagator of Biodynamic agriculture, and Waldorf education, among other things. I don’t really know that much about him. But my understanding is that Biodynamics was developed to save us from losing the knowledge and traditions that were being forgotten due to chemical agriculture and reductionist science. It includes things like planting according to the moon cycles, special compost preparations; strange practices that science seems only recently to be catching up to in understanding. Steiner said “The Heart is not a pump.” Rather he thought it was an important organ of perception, of feeling sense. I think I’m beginning to understand!

Another interesting thing in biodynamics is the use of water flow forms; specially constructed forms that charge water with energy as it flows through them. It is said that such water is more nourishing and that it carries the memory of the flow form long after it has passed through it. It occured to me over time on my hike that the water from the Mount Beacon reservoir passes through perhaps a mile of beautiful natural amazing flow forms as it cascades down. It’s getting super charged and super oxygenated.

I recently learned that Beacon’s water supply comes from three reservoirs and two wells. I’m not sure about proportions, but I will conclude that perhaps a fifth of Beacon’s water supply comes from the Mount Beacon reservoir, and gets this special charge on the way down. And I enjoy believing that this portion of our water carries that energy through the treatment process and reaches our faucets with a special charge. This contributes to the specialness of Beacon. When I take a cold shower, I often think of the water flowing down the mountain, gettng super charged on its way to me.

Of course hiking by this water a few times a week has tremendous benefits. There’s something called negative ionization. It is experienced when you sit by a waterfall, or walk in a healthy natural ecosystem, etc. Negative ions are said to increase oxygen flow and contribute to one’s general well-being. One doesn’t need to be familiar with flow forms or negative ionization to experience the benefits of a hike in nature or a sit by flowing water. I’m amazed at how often my state is transformed by my hiking practice; headaches and body aches dissipate, negative thought patterns are disrupted, extraordinary feelings arise. One would think I’d be bored of the same trail three times a week for eight months, but the opposite is true. Each time I’m flooded with excitment and gratitude, and there always seems to be new things to perceive. Earth is such a magical place.

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11.) The Liriodendron Lift

The eleventh song of the Plant Songs Project is called The Liriodendron Lift. This is one that pretty much wrote itself in just one sitting on Saturday. There was some editing in the following days, but not much. It’s nice when it works that way. It’s an uplifting song for me. Composing it and practicing it elevated my mood significantly. I hope it can do that for some of you also.

The title is a reference to a tree that grows around here called Liriodendron tulipifera / Tulip Tree or Tulip Poplar. It is the largest hardwood tree in our forests, growing up to 150 feet tall. In an open-field or lawn they grow this way and that, but in the forest the trunks usually grow perfectly straight and round with side branches only forming high up in the canopy. Once you learn to identify them, you can’t miss them in any season because of this characteristic. You can even spot them from the highway.

On my regular Mount Beacon hikes I feel awe-inspired and energized when I pass a large tulipifera. They are teaching me to stand up straight, and humbling me with their stature. Posture is an ongoing challenge for me. Forward head posture and rounded shoulders run in my family. Being a pianist and a modern human (smart telephones and computers) has contributed also. Actually seeing myself in these videos is motivating me to work on it too. I would have loved to see a more upright posture in this video, especially because of the title and its meaning here. But it’s actually not something I should be thinking about when recording. I have exercises and awareness practices that I’m working with. The hope is that someday I’ll have corrected the issue with this work and will naturally sit with good alignment at the piano without thinking of it. Right now I need to be kind to myself and call it a work in progress.

The common name, Tulip Tree, references the flowers which look a lot like the tulip flowers you know. Unfortunately it’s rare to see the flowers up close because they’re usually 50 or more feet up in the air and hidden by the leaf canopy. Every once in awhile I’ll find a fallen flower, but that’s rare. Right now, in mid-November, the leaves have dropped and you can barely make out the dried remains of this seasons flowers way up there in the canopy. Liriodendrons are on the rise. The lack of fire (natural and human-made) among other things has allowed them a leg up over Oaks. Unfortunately, according to Doug Tallamy, as awesome as they are, Liriodendron tulipifera trees are not as ecologically valuable as Quercus / Oaks. According to Tallamy’s research, Quercus are know host over 550 specialist pollinators, while Liriodendrons only host 21. They’re still a great tree and important, but we need a focus on plants that host the most specialist pollinators to address the massive insect decline that’s taken place in recent years. I highly recommend you check out Doug Tallamy’s work. Start with this video and read his books!

The Liriodendron Lift gives me a little lift. I hope it does that for some of you too!

My favorite known Liriodendron tulipifera on Mount Beacon. Photographed July 22, 2024

That same Liriodendron tulipifera tree photographed November 11, 2024

A fallen leaf of a Liriodendron tulipifera. Photographed November 12, 2024