I hope you're ready to feel my pain. This song was written while on my back in pain (one of the very few compositions created entirely in my head without the assistance of a keyboard), during one of the countless nights of sleepless hell. This song should have preceded the last one at least chronologically, as Prayer was written after a considerable amount of recovery had occurred. So, the intended disturbance of Backland fortunately turned into the intended heartfelt sweetness of Prayer. I hope you listen and can hear what I'm sayin'! In this song you're also listening to multi-instrumentalist Tarik Banzi's masterful playing here, oud, bendir, cajón, percussion, ney, and some granular synthesis tracks and more. His collaborative effort here was invaluable in creating this rather dark song - thank you maestro.

 I've been dealing with quite a bit of adversity recently. My chronic back issues have sent me through a whirlwind of pain but am happy to report an almost full recovery - for now! I did manage to have an unusual spurt of prolific music making (during the recovery part of this spell when I could at least stand to play the keyboard) and put out a ten set of video tunes on my YouTube Channel and continue composing with Tarik Banzi and a couple of originals including this one just the other day. Tarik and I are both dealing with challenges right now which is also a subject that we joke about and get laughing together, which I'm sure is therapeutic! This song and its name was created to just be a spiritual healing as much as a song can be. I first made a short version of this to have Tarik add to, which may come out in video form from his production studio. Either way, this version I wanted to share here and now and hope it touches you.

 This is the first of many in a collaboration between Tarik Banzi and I. We send tracks back and forth to each other from San Francisco and Portland developing these pieces that are a unique mixture of his moroccan/andalusian oud, bass and percussion playing and my neo-classical/jazz piano. There will be more of these coming on line here in the future. To see all of my videos and others that include me from other sources including Tarik, go here.

 This is from my first CD Straight Ahead. I thought it would be a good one to share.

 Yeah, A more-in-time version. Hee-it-go! I'm havin' fun tonight. Enjoy.

 Clayton, this is your song "Don't Know Why I Love You". I kissed the wife and put her in a taxi for your double-header, and poured a glass of red wine and went to my studio to record something for you while you did your first set tonight. This was my favorite of the originals on your MySpace page. It rocks and I jammed some piano to it. I love the chord progression and was inspired to make this track. Thanks.

 I just realized this song (version from my 2nd CD "Just Joe") was the third thing posted on this blog back on October 7th, '08. Cool! In fact, I've been thinking why this doesn't happen more often. Most of these recent song posts are ones that I play sometimes daily and they come out quite different every time and it makes me think about sharing that process with you here. I will post different versions of more songs eventually as I build up the archives here but there are risks (such as just putting up any version that comes out of me and compromising integrity, or just plain clogging up this blog with a bunch of stuff). Sometimes I do think about posting multiple versions simultaneously of any given song and have it be more interesting than boring. I'm working on that.
 Even though this version is in semi-free time it falls into the category of original tunes in the "standard jazz repertoire" style in melody and form.

 This is a sublime piece written for strings (the Capriol Suite #V. Pied-en-L'air by Peter Worlock). Ever since I first heard it I wanted to play it on the piano. I carefully transcribed it to work with piano, but to make it come alive the voice leadings and inner melodies have to be there or it will simply sound like an average coral. I approach it like an étude and it's a study in a number of things not the least of which are some big stretches for my hands. I could see this being a great concert encore to send audiences off with a moving yet sweet moment.

 I've been playing this more since my visit to Portland where I got to see my good friends Tarik and Julia Banzi - the inspiration for this song. They have a wonderful band called Al-Andalus that I've had the fortune of playing and recording with. This song doesn't sound like their music really, it's more of an abstraction of the feeling I got when listening to their music. Now it's evolved more into the neo-classical kind of thing that I do the most these days and here's a version that is very different than I've done before (as on my recording "Piano Compositions and Improvisations"). It's a bit notey in my attempt to flourish about but what the heck! Here it is and maybe I'll post a minimalist version to contrast at some point.

 Here we have a pretty energetic and impressionistic version of a song of mine inspired by Brazilian music. I do this song many ways and play it daily. I felt this would be good to post for its contrast to the main body of my work, that being rather introspective, somber, even sad. Well, not this!