Allen Shawn

Piano

Composer's Note:

During the pandemic period I started recording short piano improvisations and sending them to my son, Harold, in California. I gave each of them a title immediately after playing them. This was not a normal time, and neither was this my normal way of composing. In fact I didn't consider these spontaneous recordings,  to be compositions at all until I had reached the 19th one, at which point I felt I had completed something. After that, I reused some of the materials in a theater piece called H & G, which necessitated my attempting to transcribe some of the improvisations. This in turn led to my decision to release the complete original improvisations as a CD, and to transcribe all of them, a process that took two years. This is the book of the 19 pieces, transcribed to the best of my ability, and dedicated to Harold. To get a sense of the pieces you can listen to the originals one by one on youtube, or find the video I later made of the entire set of transcriptions.