Variations for Solo Viola d'amore

I wrote this piece for Yvain Delahousse, a terrific young French viola d'amore player. You can hear him play the beginning of it here. Yvain is planning to record a video of the whole piece soon, so you can find out what happens in the course of its four-minute life. I will post it when it is available.

This one-minute segment is the introduction. I think of it as introducing the "issue" at hand. A theme with variations will follow. The "issue" at hand can be any issue that any playing or anyone listening might be dealing with. Life, in all its complexity, is filled with one thing after another.

Writing this piece was excellent medicine for me. I wrote it during a personal struggle that I had to work my way through, and my path from a place of darkness to a place of light was made clearer as a result of bushwhacking a musical path using the viola d'amore as my means of locomotion.

The cover image is one that my mother painted. I don't know where the original might be, but its image gives me the sense of comfort that having tea with someone friendly and accepting (like my mother) can have. And I remember the lamp from childhood. You can find the music here now, and will be able to find it soon on this page of the IMSLP.