Winter Rain I

Artwork by Gail Bradshaw

It was a cold wet January in 1979 when I pulled together the musical ideas that became my first album Ancient Ships.

The endless icy rain sheeting down outside my window had a profound effect on my psyche and on the sounds coming out of my cold studio from the 1912 Steinway grand piano, giant Sabathil harpsichord, ancient Karn double manual reed organ, my Musser marimba and the toy box of beautiful old bells.

Thinking ahead to Summer, I tried to warm up with the soft marimba in Summer Rain, but the mood was much more that of the long title piece Ancient Ships.

The original name of Ancient Ships was actually inspired by a Celtic myth about a mysterious ship.

"I walked down from the hills, through the Winter rain, to the sea, where I saw a ship floating in the air...."

(A friend once remarked that as he listened to the end of Ancient Ships, he could visualize an entire fleet of Roman galleons being sucked down into the depths, trapped in a giant whirlpool....)

Both Ancient Ships and Summer Rain are built on minimalist cross accented patterns  and sometimes I improvise on these patterns on the piano or hybrid harpsichord.

A couple of years ago I created a short solo piano piece using bits of Summer Rain and Ancient Ships and named it Winter Rain.

Recently I have added hybrid harpsichord, marimba and electric piano parts to the solo piano to create a five part suite.

Winter Rain I is the first piece, just the piano part by itself.