Always on. Instan­ta­neous. No down time. Avail­able. Abbre­vi­ated. Abuse of excla­ma­tion marks. Multi-tasking. Frag­men­ta­tion. Ille­gal? Dan­ger­ous… In-the-moment. Mul­ti­ple direc­tions. Too many vari­ables to con­sider at once. Impa­tient. Faster. Abstrac­tion. Con­crete. Asphalt. Fol­low­ing dis­tance. Reaction time.

This is a children’s solo piano piece based on the tra­di­tional Yoruban music for the deity of the same name, as prac­ticed in the Cuban San­tería tradition.

Flüsse-Einflüsse is Ger­man for Streams-Influences. The con­cept of the con­ver­gence of mul­ti­ple streams of influ­ence is impor­tant to me, because I am a clas­si­cal com­poser com­ing from a jazz and pop back­ground. Sim­i­larly, the 2004/2005 DAAD Sound Under­stand­ing con­cert for which Flüsse-Einflüsse was writ­ten fea­tured both clas­si­cal and jazz per­form­ers. This idea of mul­ti­ple streams con­verg­ing is car­ried through­out the piece on sev­eral lev­els, from the mate­r­ial (taken from two of my favourite jazz tunes but reworked clas­si­cally), to the inter­ac­tion between per­former and com­poser (some sec­tions are writ­ten out, oth­ers are impro­vised), to the inter­ac­tion of reg­is­ters, tex­tures, and for­mal elements.

This is the ear­li­est piece in my cat­a­logue that I would want per­formed again. I orig­i­nally wrote the fol­low­ing about it:

This piece explores the process of learn­ing the “hard way”, which is fre­quently a painful jour­ney, but which in most cases ulti­mately leads to greater under­stand­ing, and per­haps in some greater hap­pi­ness as well.…