8. Kaleidoscope
Level 7: Back-stories
The first minute and a half of this piece is a reworking of material composed as the score to a one-act, one-line play with the title line: "Quickly, to the dirigible." The playwright (and friend), David Haan, wanted the theme to be minimalist yet build to a climax in a very short amount of time. It was only a matter of time before I revisited these 30 seconds of music to twist them into something else.

Like nearly all of the music on this album, this piece involves rhythmic structures you're not likely to hear on the radio, at church, at the bank, at the grocery store, or even at the dentist's office. After the opening section, the rhythm settles into a 7 beat form. It travels from an ever-changing landscape of genre, stopping for some salsa-infused madness on the way.

The title is supposed to evoke the visual metaphor of one theme forever unfolding into the next. As you may have noticed, many of my titles lack subtlety.