PIANO MUSIC

STEPS

My ongoing anthology entitled STEPS is projected to run throughout my life, as a sort of "travelling companion". Begun in 2001 it has now reached ten large volumes - cycles comprised of smaller, often poetically entitled movements. Piano music was the medium by which I came back into composing after a twelve year silence. Two people were catalysts in re-igniting my desire to write: the first was my good friend Michael Bell, of Keele University, who threw down the gauntlet to me (pretty much signing a blank cheque - "You write it - I will play it!"); the second was a gifted young pupil of his whose precocious playing reminded me, somewhat belatedly, of what had lain dormant for too long; that music was indeed beautiful and the most powerful conveyer of thought and expression yet devised. Sometimes, perhaps, the 'obvious' needs to be re-spoken. I am eternally indebted to both.