Acedia Series - 2011

"The Road Out of Acedia" #1

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"The Road out or Acedia" #2

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"The Road out of Acedia" #3 - (for Robin)

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"The Road Out Of Acedia" #4 - (For Alixe)

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"The Road out of Acedia" #5

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"Hawthorn"

A short piano piece: April 21, 2010

Two themes

A work-in-progress for piano uses two themes from older pieces: arpeggios from an elegy to my mother, who passed away a year and a half ago, and a twelve-tone motif from a memorial to my father who died 40 forty years ago this October.

"Two People" .(2009)

The final product of improvising on 2 themes from memorials to my parents, over the past 6 months. Since they were responsible for my love of music, I think of them each time I sit down to play.

The Bridge (1986)

1. "The Bridge in October"
2."Iron Man" 3."Irish Lace" 4. "The Bridge Like a Harp" 5. "The Bridge of Sighs"
Dedicated to Nate Horowitz and Ellen Fitzgerald
Recorded May 11, 1986 with performers Gwen Faasen, Kathy Proulx, Maria Royce, Rupert Kettle (R.I.P), Ric Troll, Paul Keller, and R.D. Swets (R.I.P.)
[Duration : 44mins)
This composition owes a lot to my Teacher, Harold Budd, elsewhere referred to as "The Godfather of Ambient Music"(?)


The Bridge of Sighs

The abandoned railroad bridge
out past the gypsum mine,
is a haven for drifters at night,
huddling on it with the mad dog and the canned heat.
The bridge I walked long ago,
before I was too many years into this childhood of mine;
a forgotten place, a secret place,
like the room under the basement stairs
where I used to hide as a child.
But on that afternoon it stood alone in the rays
of the last warm October sun.
Refugees of a sort, drifters to be sure,
we stood on the bridge, quite apart:
one looking up at the girders against the sky,
another down at the river below, And I, staring out to the point
where the river made its bend
and continued out of sight.
Heavily fueled by alcohol and Autumn,
we stood,
with the bridge like an iron man,
amidst wildflowers like Irish lace,
knowing only the bridge and the shore
that was south as we faced north.
How could I tell her had it not been for the bridge
I would not have left?
But standing on the bridge, all arguments were moot,
All questions rhetorical, the pain too great,
gears set in motion impossible to reverse.

In musical form, the bridge occurs between
the second and third verses of a song:
The third verse is very often a repeat of the first.
The bridge connects what went before with what went before that,
the immediate past with some distant past.

Another bridge, far from the gypsum mines,
spanning a canal in Venice,
connecting the courthouse with the prison.
The bridge has windows, the prisoners get their last view.
The wind blows through these windows,
producing a low whistle, a kind of moaning sound.
This bridge is called “The Bridge of Sighs.”

Everything of importance abandoned,
I returned to the bridge in Winter, after the storm.
The sound of the train in the distance,
though they had ripped up the tracks years ago,
and I found the message October had left:
“Iron Man will make the steel sing.
Irish Lace will cover the moon.
And to the bridge he walked long ago,
the child will return.

Songs of Heart and Place

For Trumpet, Voice and Piano


For Mariagnes and Carolyn:“We’ll always have Abiquiu…”

New Mexico
Feb., 2009

I. "Reveille at Ghost Ranch"
II. "Haiku from Abiquiu"

III.“God Brought me to This Land”

"My loss was so untimely. Hopeless was my longing.
Empty came back my outstretched hand.
God brought me to this land.
Regret hung on my shoulders. Sadness marked my body.
My home I carried in my hand.
God brought me to this land.
The spirit brought me to this land,
free to breathe and understand:
Freedom like a bird-on-wing.
Here is where I belong."

IV."The Turquoise Trail"

Reveille Reprise

Mariagnes Menden, Vocals and Trumpet







It has been six months since I was in New Mexico and wrote "Songs of Heart and Place", a short time, but quite long when you are waiting to hear it played for the first time. A few days ago, Mariagnes and I were finally able to get together to record it.
Nothing matches the thrill of hearing your music for the first time live. An ethereal magic that is undeniably physical. Whenever I begin to question the existence of a "spiritual" or "other world" realm, I listen up close to someone playing the trumpet or the violin or singing. To hear the emanation of sound waves moving the air molecules around on the way to the brain via the inner ear, is to have your finger on the intangible.
Just as to walk out into the high desert of New Mexico and listen to the sky and keep watch with the mountains is to come back to the very root-existence of things.

Mobile#2: "The Invasion of Light"

A piano composition for Advent, 2008.



"Somewhere between the darkness and the light. That is where we are as Christians. And not just at Advent time, but at all times. Somewhere between the fact of darkness and the hope of light. That is who we are.

'Advent' means 'coming' of course, and the promise of Advent is that what is coming is an unimaginable invasion. The mythology of our age has to do with flying saucers and invasions from outer space, and that is unimaginable enough. But what is upon us now is even more so--- a close encounter not of the third kind but of a different kind altogether. An invasion of holiness.That is what Advent is about."

---Frederick Buechner

Slow Carousel (2008)

In the old man’s sleep, a slow carousel swirled around the room, a mobile of musical shards shifting gently with the sea breeze from the barely opened window.

"My Barber's Adagio" (Thom's Thumb #12)

Maybe done; maybe a work-in-progress.

You shall be peace, Bill.

As his obituary in the Grand Rapids Press read, "The lights dimmed and the curtain came down on William Beidler life, last Tuesday." I first saw Bill perform in the Civic Theatre's production of "Jaques Brel is Alive and Well..." back in the mid-70's, and was completely taken by his performance---a rich tenor voice, broad actions on stage, and above all, his presence. Bill MOVED and was MOVING. As a composer only a couple years out of school, I thought, "If only he would sing some of my music!" Some 12 years later, I was introduced to Bill at Gibson's Restaurant, which we both frequented for lunch. For the next few years, we ended up next to each other at the bar for lunch at least three or four times a month. Already Parkinson's was beginning to attack his body, but he remained a gentle and generous man, albeit an increasingly frustrated one.

He was interested in my progress as a musician, and my 20 year old wish came true when he recorded my song, "Winter Moon" as part of his Christmas Collection.In 1996, I wrote a song for him, which he sang at a concert I gave at Aquinas College the following year. I think he knew it was not only FOR him, but also ABOUT him, him and myself, ands all other performers born with an innate sense that "it's a long walk home." Here is that recording:
[again, if it doesn't play afterr a couple of minutes click on track details.]

"Moon of My Harvest" - Tenor and Piano (1996)

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

“Moon of My Harvest”

This moon of my harvest,
The lengthening shadow
Across the furrowed land,
This time is mine alone.

A childhood of springlight
Has shadowed me always,
The sound of summer's songs
Never far away.

Through all the phases of the moon,
And seasons of the earth,
In lover’s arms, or not,
These songs were mine alone.

And all who listened to my songs,
They heard, but did not know,
My songs were quests for love,
As I was far from home.

Desperation is as good for the soul
As love is fatal to the heart.
Madness lends a certain dignity
To the restless flame within.

Lost though I’ve sometimes been in the hymns of summer,
The midnight-ocean-blue-sky parts,
And a new moon appears before me, a new moon appears before me.
I hear a familiar song:

This moon sings of my harvest,
The lengthening shadows
Across my furrowed brow:
This time is mine alone.

I must be going now, this moon to light my way.
The days are growing short,
And it’s a long walk home.

Bill Beidler, Tenor

Thom P. Miller, 1996

When our lunch companion and bartender at Gibson's, Annie Powell, died in 1997, we hugged each other outside of the church and wept like babies, half-sobbing and half-laughing at life's absurdities--- of a young woman dying so early, and of a graceful, moving performer trapped in a body he couldn't control. You shall be peace, Bill. It's been an honor...

"For Summer, In Lieu of Flowers"

Solo Piano Piece


I have carried this composition around with me for months, letting the parts get comfortable with each other. It's a very "cellular" piece. I like how it divides and subdivides.[10 minutes]