Daniel Perlongo

Piano Trio

Breezes at Yellow Creek for piano trio is first and foremost a ballad that sings, with unforeseen harmonic changes and long extended that, while expressing qualities of beauty and depth within themselves, also, play their crucial part in an overall melodic line, with its narrative-like progression and drama. It is a musical meditation on a warm, calm, sunny summer day at Yellow Creek.
Program notes for Breezes At Yellow Creek by Daniel Perlongo:
I began with a phrase taken from my work "Lake Breezes" for orchestra. I wanted to do a blow-up, an augmentation, to slow it down, to observe the expression of the sound as if closer up. I wanted to organize the time space, to divide a whole into 8, 5, 3 and 2 parts simultaneously, and to provide aural markers of those divisions. So I directed my invention towards those markers, sometimes creating nuance, embellishment and variation in the line or counter line in the Violin and Cello, and sometimes applying invention to the accompanying piano.
My priority was to have a musical line and overall fabric with tones elongated in such a way so as to emphasize their unique expressive value and at the same time their place in a sense of progression and feeling of cause and effect. I was working on that edge, border, bridge or space that extends from the contemplation of the moment for itself through to the movement of past, present and future.
My overall purpose was to compose a ballad that sings, with unforeseen harmonic changes and long extended tones that - while participating in the dynamic of a dramatic narrative - have beauty and depth within themselves.