All in Three Quarter Time

Here's something you might not have noticed: All the music on "Two Hands" is in 3/4 time.

I didn't really plan it that way. I did have it in my mind to someday do a follow up to "Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz ", and so my sketchbooks of ideas did have a lot of 3/4 time pieces. But for "Two Hands" I did not want to be constrained in any way, so I wrote and rehearsed and even recorded some pieces in other time signatures. But none of those pieces fit on the final album. They stood out awkwardly, interrupted the flow of the CD. And some of them are really really good compositions (they will someday see the light).

Even though the music is all in 3/4, "Two Hands" does not feel whirly, or light-headed. Very few of the pieces are played in strict tempo, and those that are ("Oak Sky" for example), are more moody and insistent than danceable. This is not a CD about dancing. it's a CD of mood and emotion - in any way or form. It just happens to be in 3/4 time.

Desert Rocks and Gunnar - the Connection?

Rob Jenkins - master of the lens.

None of us involved in putting "Two Hands" together can explain why Rob's photo (of the mysterious rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley) seemed the perfect compliment to my solo piano music. It just was. We considered lots of other cover ideas, but none was as soulful and complete.

Rob is a charming and amazing guy (you should see the complex shadow-box creations he's made for his wife!), and when he takes a camera into his hands, it dances and finds the moments that beg to be recorded. His nature photography (like on the cover of "Two Hands") is elegant and fresh. His portraiture, especially of kids, is remarkable for its honesty and simplicity and, again, elegance. I know of no other photographer who is so adept at revealing the complex emotions of those fleeting glances that children have. His sense of color is startling, and he frames everything with a true artist's eye. Check out the work on his site RobJenkinsPhotography.com. He's in NYC.

Marie Antoinette & Gunnar - The connection?

I've known Kent Sparling, the producer of "Two Hands", since he was a young man. I've known his music since he was a teenager.

Back in the early 80's I had a few piano students, and one of them was a wonderful teenage girl. She gave me a tape of her boyfriend's band, Riis Spargo. Yeah, okay, your boyfriend's band, sure, I'll listen...

But it was GOOD. I played that little cassette over and over.

Years later, I hooked up with her boyfriend - Kent Sparling. He was in a monoprint class that my wife was taking (Yes, he's one of those multi-talented types). We became friends. I played keyboards sometimes in his follow-up band, Eyeland. Kent is a wonderful carpenter/electrician, and together with a craftsman pal of his helped us build the studio where I've done much of my work over the past decade.

But besides being a visual artist and a songwriter and experimental musician and electrician and craftsperson, Kent had another dream - to work at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound. To get there, he moved to Vancouver, BC, where he apprenticed in the sound for film world. His experiences there filled out his resume, and he returned to the bay area and knocked on the door at Skywalker, and they hired him.

Nowadays, besides being a visual artist/experimental musician/etc., he's also a highly respected and sought-after mixer for films. He's done many of the the foreign language versions of Star Wars, he helped sink the Titanic, he's mixed a ton of films including some knockout ones you've seen and heard, like "Lost in Translation", "Adaptation" and "The Virgin Suicides" and, yes, "Marie Antoinette". And then, he makes his own wonderful, ethereal/trippy music using state-of-the-art retro synthesizers. And he does his own cover art. And he wired his own studio. And, (how lucky can I be?), he's produced 3 of my CDs along the way. More on Kent at his website.