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PROGRAM NOTES:

1-4 Flights of Passage

Flights of Passage for solo piano provides musical commentary on four poems by Walt Whitman: “I saw in Louisiana a Live-oak Growing,” “Give me the splendid silent sun,” “the Dalliance of the eagles,” and “the mystic trumpeter.” the work was written for and dedicated to the marvelous pianist James Dick. It was Dick who suggested the poems from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as the literary basis for the piece.

The composition is cast in two separate parts, each consisting of two unequal movements inspired by Whitman’s verses. In both parts, the first movement can be viewed as an introduction to and integral facet of the second (and main) movement of the section, joining it without pause.

The two poems that provide the programmatic impetus for the first part (respectively, “I saw in Louisiana a Live-oak Growing” and “Give me the splendid silent sun”) are artful in their reiteration of visual images and in the rhythmic balance and