Wisteria
for solo piano

Work no. 237
2023

I've loved the title "Wisteria" since the moment I saw an announcement of a David Lynch film/tv project by that name. I've always loved David Lynch's work – films and paintings alike – and somehow "Wisteria" conjured up the most beautiful images in my head, of scenes taking place at night, outside, somewhere where there are trees, and an asphalt road... I would've never used the title if Lynch ended up using it; but the announcement turned out to be bogus. So my original inspiration for this piece is the abstract nighttime image my imagination painted, of a scene from a David Lynch movie that never got made.

This work is a satellite piece of the final movement of Star Colors, a large piano cycle I composed in 2022. The movement in question, Diamond, ends with the type of texture used here: explosions of wistful chords, fading away. Originally, a very long sequence of these explosions was composed, but eventually I trimmed their number to just twelve, and decided I'd keep the rest for a satellite piece. I then somehow overwrote or lost the original file, and had to compose all new music for Wisteria – a beginning and an ending to frame the music from Diamond, which is quoted here verbatim.

Several weeks later I composed another satellite piece for Star Colors: Study V for MIDI-controlled piano. It uses a completely different approach to composition, and sounds completely different to Diamond, but it has a similar logic to its ending.