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Things may have been quiet on the blog, but I\u2019ve been doing tons of music work lately. The recent round of Zo went well: I took a bit of a risk playing mostly pieces that were fresh out of the practice oven (or, in a couple of cases, still baking), but people seemed to enjoy it, and I was certainly satisfied.

(If you want to know about future concerts, you should get on the mailing list.)

Concerts done, I\u2019m now composing day and night, quite productively. I now have a complete first draft of my set of dances! The last big obstacle was a sort of \u201ckeystone moment\u201d in the piece, where everything has to come together just so \u2014 but with some dogged persistence and late nights, I pushed through and filled in the final hole in the cycle. It\u2019s very exciting; I\u2019ve been working on them since forever.

Even though I have a complete draft, however, a huge amount of work remains: there\u2019s a lot of refining and revising, practicing, and polishing the interpretation necessary in order to get a really good recording together. It will be a good long while before you can hear the full cycle.

In the meantime, I\u2019m recording rough versions of the pieces as I learn to play them. I always hesitate a bit to do that, because the rough versions are, in fact, rough, and don\u2019t completely convey the ideas of the music. There\u2019s always a danger that the ideas will be so muddled that the music will just sound like a jumble of notes. Performance really matters!

However, I don\u2019t like the alternative of not sharing anything until it\u2019s perfect; I\u2019d rather keep people at least somewhat in the loop on what I\u2019ve been doing \u2014\xa0partly because folks seem to enjoy it, and partly because I\u2019m eager to share! Enough of the music comes through in these rough versions, I think, to let you in on the fun of watching the whole cycle emerge.

In that spirit, then, here\u2019s one I finished writing a couple of months ago and am now playing somewhat successfully. It was a hit with the audience at Zo. As per the warning above: the performance is not yet completely assured: you\u2019ll hear me struggling for notes in some spots. Use your imagination a bit, and pretend it\u2019s rock-solid steady. Or just pretend it rocks.

\n\n\n\n\n\nPaul Cantrell\n\n\n\n\u25b6\ufe0f\nManic Dance (rough version)\n\n\nPaul Cantrell, piano\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2b07\ufe0f\nDownload\n\n\n(2:32 / 3.7 M)\n\n\n\n

The sound at the beginning is a whack from the music desk being pushed back. After that, throughout the piece, you\u2019ll hear fingertips damping the strings \u2014 sometimes after the hammer strikes and sometimes as it strikes. I love that sound, and this isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve used it.