Magic (TPM, March 11, 2024)

The Amen Carol (TPM, 2023)

Two Short Piano Pieces

Thom's Halloween Song

While Away (1997)

"Lillian of the Valley" - May,2022

"Vestiges (What Remains)"--- "In Lieu of Flowers(IV): For Peg Porter (J...

Heron, Blue (May, 2023)

"Kerouac's Madness, Ginsberg's Clair De Lune" (Thom P. Miller, 2022)- Si...

July 13, 2022

SKIP IF YOU'RE ALLERGIC TO DUST Putting my latest composition, “Lillian of the Valley”(May,2022), in my portfolio, I noticed the first piece in this collection, “Inch Time Foot Gem" was written in May,1972, when I was just getting out of Cal Arts. This binder holds the result of 50 years of writing—the single act I have chosen to define me---and also the decisions, sacrifices and wrong turns due to my attachment to creating different arrangements of tones that inevitably said something about myself. There are over 70 compositions in this collection, most have been performed in public at least once, including several big Holy Week Cantatas written for specific churches with specific performers in mind. Pragmatic questions ( Will it work? Can they sing it? How long will it take to teach?) made for some interesting and downright fun composing! 70 compositions by a now-dusty 70 yr. old composer, starting 50 years ago as a young man, lost and trying to figure things out after his father’s unexpected death 3 years earlier---which, it would turn out, would continue to be the case through 50 years, to this day.

Country Boy

Oh Yeah. Just another "gettin' older" song by another "gettin' older" songwriter, except I made this up when I was 23.

"Indigent Night" - (Thom P. Miller, 1984)

Indigent Night (1984)

It’s an indigent night with a delinquent moon.
Stick with me, baby, and you’ll see the stars
(they only come out at night.)
And an indigent scream that’s just passing through
(nice to see you.)

A long dark night in the city of the soul,
the run-down section of the heart.
Feelings with addresses unknown
belly up to the bar where they water down
the vermouth and the truth.

Sweet delinquency! Sweet delinquency’s the thing!
It darts about like sparks through the stubble of the night,
lights up the truth with neon joy.
(God is in neon and neon is a gas.)
Transient gals, won’t you come out tonight,
Juke box eyes a’flashing?

Vagrancy! It darts about like sparks through the
Stubble of my beard
(God is in neon and neon is a gas.)
lights up the night with radical snow.
Sweet Delinquency!
(Streetlight Madonnas, come out tonight,
shed those juke-box tears!)

It’s an invalid night with a malpractice moon,
(a long, dark night in the city of the soul)
Obstacle illusions that fill up the night,
(the run-down section of the heart)
Foul up the air like the dog days of emotion
(The sidewalk of the stars! The sidewalk of the stars!)
and all their monkey-fart dreams.

Desperation shoots through the veins on its way to the heart.

The death-squads of desire, the kamikazi’s of lust,
play under the lights a friendly game of search-and-destroy.
Sirens wail, cut through the night
with a searchlight fist in anger or salute
to the malignancy of dreams, the delinquency of starlight,
the indignity of shadows.

The air is conditioned to the moaning of angels,
kneeling in the half-light, begging for indulgence.
The night is accustomed to the customs of strangers,
the habits of drifters, filets of the soul!
Vacant lot vigils of flop-house truths!
Vigilante vespers by choirs of the lost!
Stations of the double-cross!

The air is scented with a summer of lilacs,
Nostalgic transfusions of a whole different sort;
On the outskirts of memory: a girl dressed in white.

The hour before dawn, with its muscatel sweetness…
The stillness of shadows…
The silence of the mind as the heart strikes out.

Thom P. Miller, 1984
Soprano: Gwen Faasen
Alto: Kathy Proulx
Tenor: R. D. Swets (RIP, Bob.)
Percussion: Ric Troll