UPDATE:  Right before Christmas 2023 The Gift of Life organization that handles transplant donors and recipients finally decided that the family of my for and I could personally communicate with each other. We had filled out 2 sets of forms asking to be able to talk. This took too long. I finally know who gave me life! His name is Neal. I'll keep the last name private. 

He has three young adult children. His death was sudden and unexpected after having severe pain in his head. I had a long talk with their mother Connie who told me about Neal and his children. Two of his children are musicians, one who has released albums. Best of all, except for one son, they live only a two hour drive from me in Pa. This connection has made all of us happy. Neal lives on in me. There is so much that never would have happened without this gift of life to me.
***************

Ten years ago I had a liver transplant. They never tell you who donated it because of privacy issues but you can write a letter and give it to your transplant co-ordinator to pass on to them and they can contact you if they want to. I didn't do that. The first couple years were touch and go for me and I was in and out of the hospital quite a bit. The years that followed were rough. The medicine I have to take causes cancer and I had more surgeries for that. Liver disease caused my bones to be brittle and I've broken quite a few. But about a year ago my drs said that whatever I die from it won't be my liver. It is functioning very well. The man who gave me his liver has a family. Hopefully their grieving causes them less pain. I wanted to write music for him, for them that expressed my emotions at having ten years of life I came close to not having. My doctors told me I would not have lived another two weeks before I would have gone into a coma. I would have missed my grandchildren growing up and three great grandbabies being born and a fourth on it's way.  I would have not recorded 100 pieces of music as my legacy to future generations. Not a day has gone by that I have not thought about this man. He checked the box 'organ donor' on his drivers license. We rarely know when the end is coming. We need to appreciate every day we have. If he could only now see through my eyes. ❤️

If You Could See Through My Eyes

Explain a green world to a child
who has never played in the grass
Explain how it sounds to hear a bird sing
That flies through the sky in the wild
Explain the sound of a babbling brook
With sweet wind as it blows through the trees
Lay in the grass and watch the clouds pass
Feeling happy, so lazy and free.

My grandchildren cried when I said, "Go outside,"
as they clutched their phones in their hands
Playing meant games, addicted to screens
Play outside? I don't understand
Their memories of childhood, how will they explain
When playing outside was remembered as pain
I'm glad I'll be gone. I won't have to know
What the world was like when the food wouldn't grow

So many are waiting for somebody else
To wake up and fix the mess that was made
Who cares if the children are hungry and poor
You had to give birth since clinics locked doors
Who cares if the storms, the fires and drought
Destroyed their homes and made them afraid
The rich need more money, corporations say,
"Climate change is here to stay."

The wars, the bombs, refugees fleeing
Leaving their family by the side of the road
Thank God it isn't us, we say
Fox News tells us every night and day
We think we are safe if truth be told
God will save the religious right
Leave all others out in the cold
Stupidity has the largest price to pay

When the bees are gone and the birds stop singing
When the oceans are dead, only trash on the beach
We sucked out the life the world had to give
Only corpses of the dead now beneath our reach
We struggle to breathe, no healthcare for all
No backyards to play in, fading stars in the sky
Teach the children about green grass
Dreams to all. Goodnight

Explain a Green World To a Child

In 1959 Candi and I went to kindergarden in the same class. We lived three blocks from each other. We graduated from highschool in the same class. There were other kids in that class that I graduated with. Families didn't move much like they do today. Candi went on to become a fabulous painter and still lives in the house she grew up in, while I can't count how many times I moved. I found out recently she isn't feeling good and is having a hard time. So I do what I do and I record music. Everyone should have their own music.

Candi Land

Warming up my fingers and co-ordinating my hands. No thought. No reason, just playing up and down the keyboard. Still very agile. No arthritis. At this point in my life I couldn't ask for more.

Tinkering On The Keys #1

if is difficult to find something positive to say and tell the truth. It seems the concept of right and wrong don't matter as long as you can score points and win regardless if people get hurt. Certain politicians don't care about the life of a pregnant woman even if she is dying from health complications, even if the fetus wouldn't survive, either. They don't care about the baby should if be born because they don't care about the life, just the ability to control. And if doesn't matter that religion should not influence politics and the separation of church and state doesn't matter anymore. 

But I don't recognize this Christian religion anymore because of the hate filled rhetoric about people who aren't white and hetero who believe guns belong in teachers desks instead of creating safer classrooms with adequate gun laws to protect them. We slaughtered the people who lived here before us and enslaved people we kidnapped in Africa. Now a certain political party is rewriting history so children will grow up ignorant of the truth. And don't say gay out loud in school! This list this on and on. How do we ignore these things while telling ourselves we are the greatest country in the world. Many countries have suffered, past and present over white men's need for domination. We are all human. We have differences but being white does not give anyone the right of control over others. Pretending this doesn't exist doesn't make it better. Ignoring it doesn't change it. This is what it feels to die of a broken heart. The land of the free and home of the brave, from sea to shining sea is just a story we tell with no longer any truth in i. We have sucked the life out of this land. I'm glad I won't be here when the final breath exhales. 

Humanity's Sadness

Sometimes we go through hard times and we lose hope that we will get through it in one piece. Sometimes we lose a part of who we are that we thought defined us.  Anger sets in because we don't know if we have the strength to find it again. But without these mountains to climb it is impossible to get to the next place. Life changes. We don't realize we have the power to mold those changes. That power comes from within, not an imaginary outside source. We need to take responsibility for our life or we will never be happy. I have been down this road. It does not get easier. Life isn't supposed to be easy. You have to work for it with the wisdom you gained from the mistakes you made. Find the music that is still there. Take one day at a time. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

Choose Life My Friend

So many people struggle with insomnia because of devices in bed. I am guilty myself. Most of my music was created to listen to in the dark when there is no other sound. Put in your earbuds so it goes right into your brain - and dream.

Insomnia

Music to sleep by. Turn out the lights. Put in your earbuds and close your eyes in the dark. Enjoy.

London Bridges

This is the second version of this piano improv. I asked Sophie, my 13 yr old student to add to the music a cello part the way she felt it. She has good instincts for someone so young. She has played several other pieces of music in the past 3 years that you can easily find gong down my list of tracks. she listened once to the original music and then added the cello.  I was pleased with what she played because she was able to feel where the music was going.

Insomnia (Collab With Sophie)Version 2

I'm in the middle. I'm not yet 9 years old, but I already knew I was going to teach music even though I had only started playing at age 7. I would bring my friends inside and give them lessons on how to play Chopsticks and later, Heart and Soul. The family in the photo doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't for a long time. My older sister isn't in it. Some of my family is still living but there is absolutely no communication. There is only animosity and disrespect directed at me. There is no love or caring. Sad isn't it? I gave up.

Growing up between 1954 and 1972, when I left home to go to school, I had no intention of moving back to my hometown.

I had a wonderful childhood. Children today don't experience the joy of being a child whose sole objective was being able to play outside with a dozen other neighborhood children. 

My parents were still kids when they got married right out of High school and had three babies in four years. My sisters did the same thing, never finding out who they were and what their talents were. Could I sell cars for 35 years? Never. We were just so different. There were many reasons that tore our family apart. My father turned to alcohol after his kids were grown, in his 40's and was dead at 54. My mother couldn't maintain the family business herself and lost everything she had worked for and had nothing to show for it. I haven't talked to my sisters in years. They are angry at me for reasons I don't understand and I gave up trying to figure it out. They don't talk to each other, either. I don't know what it's like to have a sister. Are they lonely, too? Is it pride that stands in the way?

Creating music is my way of understanding what I feel. It is like my diary. From a young child I tried tried to play what I could hear inside, but I couldn't, and there wasn't anyone who could teach me that because they couldn't play their own music. It took a long time to understand and I'm not yet quite there, learning how to play the piano from the inside out. It has changed the way I teach. Anyone can learn to read music but only a few can actually hear their own music. I've written a lot of music for people as gifts and music for my own family, especially the newest babies. Number 5 great grandbaby is due in a few months. Hopefully it is something they will keep to always connect me to them.

I can't change what my sisters think of me. I believe it is regretful but it is their choice, not mine. If my parents could have looked ahead and saw how we ended how sad they would have been. When I uploaded this music to SC last night I sat there, overwhelmed and cried. It is one thing to lose your family to death; quite another to lose them when while they still live.

Broken Family

Another collab with my student Sophie. I am playing piano and she added cello and birds. It's great to be able to do recordings with her, so she can hear what she is playing. It is wonderful encouragement when she can read comments people have left for her on other music. For me, hearing her music grow sometimes I can't tell if she is playing or if it is me. We have been working on expression. Anyone can learn how to read music and play the right notes at the right time with their hands, but learning how to feel music with your body is different. So many adults took piano lessons when they were young and stopped playing and don't have the confidence anymore . If they had a way to hear themselves now maybe they would be encouraged to play again, otherwise it is a complete loss. Today most public schools have shut down creative studies. Children aren't exposed to music like they used to, not since George Bush changed education and made it all about testing testing testing and teachers couldn't teach the way they had been used to. Now its getting much worse. Children need to learn to be creative. It gives me great pleasure to teach them (and adults too!) 

Here Come The Birds!

So much of humanity is lost to drug addiction. Most who come in contact with it turn their faces away. It's ugly. Why don't these people quit? Don't they want to? But if it was that easy don't you think they would? Don't you think they know they are dying? Withdraw is harder than dying. Some drugs you can quit, but do you think the craving just goes away? Once an addict,  always an addict.  We have to try to find better things to get addicted to that are good for us. 

There is a new drug in town and it's horrible.  People are getting addicted not knowing it is being mixed into what they are already using.  It's called TRANQ. There is no such thing as heroin anymore. You can no longer buy it on the street. Heroin you can detox from and you have a chance of staying sober.  But the addiction is still there. Then Fentanyl was mixed in.  It was cheaper to make and there was more profit to be made for the dealers. It is 50-100x stronger than heroin but you went into withdraw faster and had to inject more often. The craving was more intense. Many tens of thousands of people OD'd. Do you think they deserved it? It was their own fault because they are the ones who tried drugs in the first place? Maybe you tried cigarettes or alcohol? Do you still drink or smoke - ever? Can't quit? People drink to get a buzz. It's the same,  looking for an altered state of reality. 

The lucky ones who OD'd when it was only opiates were saved with Narcan and it pulled them out. But many people can't make it through detox. There aren't enough resources or rehabs. Then Tranq was added - a horse tranquilizer. The addicts didn't know. It isn't an opiate.  Narcan won't help them. The addiction is brutal.

In areas of cities across America, blocks are covered with people who are lying on the sidewalks or standing bent over at the waist. They have decaying sores all over their bodies. They wake up in horrendous withdraw. OD's have been doubling every year from the previous year. This year will be much ppworse.  These people are still human beings with family who love them. Not enough is being done. There is no media attention, while Tranq is reaching across America looking for its next victim. 

I have not heard one word by ANY politician openly addressing what is happening. They would rather harp on illegal immigrants bringing drugs across the border,  but immigrants are not doing THIS. The problem is much bigger than the border.  Is there no help, or does everyone think these people deserve it? Did you know many are only in their teens and come from good families in average rural towns?

I wrote this music for them.  My heart hurts. No matter what part of society you live in,  rich,  poor, middle class, educated with degrees, business owners,  teachers or even someone given pain meds for surgery but the pain didn't go away. No one is safe.  Put the word "tranq" into YouTube and watch. . . then find a way to help. Please.

Shadows Of Humanity

When I sat at my piano today - or rather leaned on a stool because my piano is at standing level - to warm up my fingers because at 69 every part of you has to be warmed up if you want it to work, I hit the record button.  This music is what I played.  This entire piece of music including the other tracks was recorded in less than 20 minutes.  I laid the piano track, then the flute and strings.  Nothing was mixed or changed.  I uploaded it exactly as it was played.  

My husband, after all these years, rarely has anything to say about my music although he plays on the couch to take a nap and listens for hours. It
It is not unusual for me to play or work on a piece of music for 3-5 hours. Today he walked into the room and said he really liked what I just played and that it sounded like music at the end of a melancholic movie. 

Being able to improvisations music and tell a story about what you are feeling is such a wonderful thing.  I usually have a purpose for why I'm creating a piece, but today I had no reason.  No story to tell.  What came out has a reason of its own.  All I could was just listen.  There are a few mistakes, as usually, but that shows you it was spontaneous.  So I decided to upload it. 

This past month I've been working on piece of music that has taken longer - because I'm writing it and also hand drawing the score.  It is one thing to be able to play the piano, but that doesn't mean you know enough theory to draw the score and not use a computer to do it for you. 

So I hope you like my warm up today.  I can't plan when to be creative.  It doesn't work like that.  I can only take advantage of it when it happens. 

For No Reason At All

This music was first uploaded 2 months ago. Sophie has been working on it since then have better fluidity and expression. Yesterday, 11-19-23, we recorded it again. I decided to exchange the files. If you heard it before there is  remarkable difference. I am proud of her.

Song for Johanna was written by Franz Gordan. Sophie is a student of mine, age 14, who I have been teaching for 4.5 years. There is a playlist with her name that has various pieces she has played or worked on with me since she was 9.

Learning to play the piano is more than learning to play the right note at the right time. A beginner doesn't have enough control over their hands to be able to affect how the note is played - how the keys are touched, and the sound blended. Can the emotion be felt? The player has to know the language of music so well that they don't have to think about the notes being played, and can separate themselves to  listen to the music they are playing. 

Unfortunately, most piano teachers can't teach this because they can't get beyond teaching songs in piano method books - They can only teach what they were taught. I have heard many parents tell me they took lessons when they were young, and when I ask if they are still playing, the answer is almost always, "No". They forgot whatever they had memorized so long ago and they never learned how to create music, so it is all moot. It is like learning another language. You can memorize a phrase but you don't understand how the words in the phrase work together. You can't have a conversation in that language let alone show emotion. Music is a conversation.

I have been teaching for more than 50 years and have had hundreds of students. Most don't last long enough to get to the point I am with Sophie - and hopefully I will have a few more years with her before she goes out in the world. But what she is learning she won't forget. Memorizing music is a small portion of what we do. There is so much more to learning how to play music on any instrument than learning how to play what someone else wrote. 

Listen to her playlist and hear her growth. Song for Johanna is the beginning of her next phase of learning. Her lessons are 2-3 hours. She couldn't learn enough in one hour to play with this much maturity. She is such a joy to teach.

Song forJohanna Played by Sophie (revision)

I am in increasing pain every day because my spine is a mess. Playing the piano is one of the most painful things I do. It sucks the oxygen out of the room. I don't let it beat me. The day before I recorded this I had steroid shots in my mid back, hoping it would give me a little relief. That day I had no pain. I sat at the piano for 5 hours working on music because it was such a joy. It lasted for a day and a half.  It was supposed to be weeks. anyone with chronic pain for years knows what this is like. I can only lay back on pillows for so many hours each day. I am not complaining. It is what it is. Arthritis in my hands would be worse and I have none of that. But this day - this one day was wonderful. I had asked the doctor for one day. That is what I got. W.e have to fight for the things we love.Music gives me the energy to keep going,  Who knows what these hands will produce. I don't have to be the best. I need only be the best I can be.

No Pain

When I first sit at the piano each day, it's important to warm up my fingers. Anyone who uses their muscles to run, dance or play any sport has to warm up their muscles. stretch them and orient them to what they are doing. Piano is no different. I have strong hands without a hint of arthritis. When I was still gigging, playing harder R&R, I had callouses on my fingers which often split and bled by the end of the night. My music style has changed over the years. But serious playing without warming up means the hands won't be coordinated and will be harder to control. The fingers need to know where to go whether I am looking at them or not. They need to be able to judge the distances between the keys and they need to be limbered up. So I do a variety of exercises playing up and down the keys in a variety of different key signatures. I unusually to play 3-5 hours at a stretch - because I love it that much. There is so much more music to play. If a warm up sounds decent I post it. All of my music are improvs but most of them have an intent, a story to tell. This one doesn't. I'm just having fun.

Tinkering On The Keys #7

One more piano piece that was played as a  warm up. Any creative craft that uses muscles and requires co-ordination to do well you need to warn up. I have many finger exercises that warm up my hands.I need to situate my hands so they know where the keys are without needing to watch them. I like to play in different keys and go up and down the keyboard. I record when I play because I never know what is going to come out. This is another of those warm up sessions. Played once and can never be played again.

Tinkering On The Keys #8 - Piano only of No Reason at All

It was 3 hours before midnight and it would become a new year. It was an ominous feeling. All year it had been building. 2024 was going to be a defining year, and maybe not in a good way. There will be changes in who we are. A year that will affect the world. I felt I needed to put my feelings into music, not where I control what I play, but to relax into it and let my fingers tell the story. When I "try" to write music it is work and it takes planning and many hours to perfect, especially if I write the piano score. When I improvise it is played in one take, never to be played again. It took my whole life to be able to play this way. It is who I am, not trying to do or sound like anyone. I hope you enjoy. Thank you for listening.

I was tired.I had spent many hours working on a go fund me for a families in the Congo - the DRC. I've known them for 8 years, and have helped them with money for medicine and food quite a few times, but this needed more help than I can do. I made a video for it as well as a written story. My music is the soundtrack for that with 20 photos. If you would like to see it and help me share it I would be indebted to you.

https://gofund.me/f2c2d76f

Artwork by Armando Macias
Death row, San Quentin
I've known him 20 years

Everything Changes At Midnight

each piece of music I record has a purpose, a reason for existing. When I try to record a new piece and there is no story behind it, it comes out flat. When there is a reason behind it the emotion is released. One area of my life is painful and hard to overcome is caused by my family. Family is supposed to love you and care if you are dead or alive. I don't thInk mine does. But whatever their reason is, that reason is based on a period of time we can't undo - and it is just a shot of time. Each of us goes through many phases and we change with every one. who we were as children - our education and relationships _ and our roles as parent, grandparents, and much more. we change constantly. If you don't try to know and understand the people you are connected to, you miss a lot. 

I am making a video to go with this. The title - Lest we Forget - will be filled with photographs of the childhood I shared with my sisters. I think it is important that we don't throw away parts of our lives because of whatever grudge they hold against me. That I do not understand. I have to learn to let this go, so this is my last attempt to communicate with them using part me that matters. It has taken my entire life too become who I am now. Who are they? They can throw this in the trash if they want, but at least I tried.

Lest We Forget

This is an Improv. Each track is layered at the piano. I have been a bit down lately because I am not well. Life is hard right now. It has made me very conscious of how precious time is, and how fast it is going by. We always think we have more time and therefore we waste it on things that don't matter.

I am computerizing all of the music, piano arrangements, lead sheets, lyrics along with photo shoots over the past 50 years in an attempt to document who I am and where I was at each stage of my life and music. I was never even close to being well known but that has little to do with the enjoyment of creating music or the quality and the personal growth we go through during life. My children were with me from birth as I played music around the country but I doubt if they know or even remember the music I wrote throughout their life, so how will their children and grandchildren understand who I am? When you create music it is like a diary. As I enter it into the computer note by note I am reliving the time when it was written. I didn't "decide" to be a musician. It wasn't a choice. It is who I am since I was born. It was always there. I need more time . . .

Searching For Hope

This is music for the chapter titled "The Value of a Letter" in the book being written "Inside the Forbidden Outside' due out by the end of the year.  The book is about the life of Jamie Cummings, who has been incarcerated for for 14 years - a gentle man with epilepsy who has never been allowed to touch his son even one time.  The book is about the injustice and racism of our prison system in the US.

Silence Is So Loud

This piece was recorded quite a long time ego. I hadn't really listened to it in a couple years. It still brought years to my eyes. It was a very emotional time in my life. All of my pieces very recorded for a reason.  Sometimes for me and sometimes as a gift for others.

There is also a music video  https://youtu.be/z9OxroRGpO0.  There is poetry for this. I have to find it

Picking up Broken Pieces

Piano and strings. Dedicated to all the classmates in the Pottstown, Pa  high school class of 1972 who have passed away

 Stories Without Words

So Long Old Friends

The is the music for a chapter, with the same title, in the book I am writing - Inside The Forbidden Outside. Jamie Cummings is in prison. He needs to keep his head on straight during the years he spends in a solitary cell. Letters written between him and a woman become very real as she enters his prison cell and teaches him about life.

Inside The Forbidden Outside

Ghosts in My Head

Music for a chapter in the upcoming book "Inside The Forbidden Outside", about the years inside prison, most in solitary confinement and how he learns to cop with life and come out whole. I'm recording music for every chapter and also making music videos found at Youtube on the channel - Sonni Quick Piano Improv

How Do I Find My Way?

Segregated away from anything human, being alone for years is very difficult to live through and come out sane. This is year 13 for Jamie in prison. His sentence is 17 years, but he get paroled? It's a waiting game. His story is being written, called "Inside the Forbidden Outside". I just sent him the first half of the second draft to approve. Hopefully when it is published it will help people understand. The music you find here, as well as the music videos at YouTube go with chapters in the book with the same titles. You can find some of those chapters at http://mynameisjamie.net

Who's Taking Care of My Broken Heart

In the book I am writing - Inside The Forbidden Outside - Jamie cannot leave his solitary cell to visit with anyone so part of what happens takes place inside lucid dreams. Dreaming allows conversations to happen that originally took place in letters that were written during the month and year of the chapters. 

You can read some of chapters at http;//mynameisjamie.net. 

The years of confinement take a toll. The letters are the only way to not let the lack of human contact destroy his psyche. The chapters go into the psychological state he was in as well as the inhumane treatment he received that no one on the outside can really understand unless you experienced it. It is why most of the music that is written for the book is emotional and melancholic.

There will be 2 books.  2006 - 2016 and 2016 until he is released, and the process of reentry and dealing with the outside world how it stands today with the ill treatment of ex-felons and the racist attitudes that seem to be increasing and more violent every year.

On another note - I need to raise money for a good story editor to work with and line editor, as well as the cost of publishing. I don't have that kind of money. I have a disability check.

I opened up two online stores. Right now i am increasing the inventory as i find good suppliers. It has been quite a learning process. RIght now I have;

Musical instruments -  mostly guitars and a few electric violins, 
Household items  - rugs, Tiffany style lamps and windows and other items
Fragrances 

What I am asking is for people who like my music and who understand what my music is for - to go take a look. I need feedback.  I prefer you go to the store on Facebook. search: Watch and Whirl  
 
If you "like" the page and share it with your own social media it affects how many timelines Facebook will share my posts with for free. I'm just getting started so any help is appreciated. The store will grow faster because there will be more sales.  Of course if you purchased something I'd put you on my Christmas card list!

But honestly, I know sales will increase as I list more and more items. so many people do a bulk of their shopping online, myself included.

The other store location is http;//watchandwhirl.ecwid.com.  

It has the exact same items. I am also developing eBay, then Shopify and Amazon. I have to make money. Otherwise,I won't be able to publish my book so it looks professional. I also need to clean up my music tracks because it is the soundtrack for the book and I don't want anyone to wrinkle up their nose anywhere. There are mistakes that need to come out and I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to do that.

I share a lot of music from others on my music facebook page. 
http;//facebook.com/sonniquicksmusic.  If there is anything I can share for you don't hesitate to ask. For all of us here, networking is how our fan base grows. You can go to http;//sonniquick.net which is my website and subscribe to my mailing list. If you have one, or a newsletter send me a msg.

On that note I will say good nite, go to sleep  .  .  . and dream a little.

Inside the Fobidden Outside

Dreams of Dreaming (impt info below)

Sometimes we take lonely walks in our minds as we try to understand what we did that made our life go down different paths. Most of my music borders on the melancholy feelings we have bottled up. For me, my music helps me make sense of those feelings. Almost all of my music represents something I am writing, most often the book I am working on, "Inside The Forbidden Outside", inside the journey of the psychological effects of solitary confinement. We are often subject to that whether inside a prison or not.

Recording music for it and making music videos has made this a time consuming project as it goes through edits.

You can read some of the chapters at http;//mynameisjamie.net

**Image by Stephan Keller at pixabay.com

Walking The Halls of My Mind


 Watch the video as you listen so it makes sense.

https://youtu.be/0m-Z0quMx6Y?si=xQB_2bakrMUScV0s

My goal when I record a new improv piece is to make you stop and listen and feel the emotion it was created with - for you to add the story that is in your head this piece would go with. So take that deep breath and hold it, because to let it out would make your tears flow. Hang your head when it is over and play it again.  


 

The Music Tells The Story

Dream music. Being able to sit at my piano and just play anything I am feeling is one of the best parts of being me. Never knowing what is going to come out is intoxicating. "I want to make music about rain," is all I need. It doesn't have to be the best there is, it just has to be real. It gives meaning to being alive. If I wasn't here this music wouldn't exist. I wouldn't exist, and now I will always be here to anyone who comes after me.

We Needed The Rain

Some days have been harder than others to go through. I lose track of what day it is because of the isolation. There is sadness knowing there are millions of people who are grieving the loss of their family and friends this year that should not have happened this way.  There are many more that don't know they are on the list. I've worked hard to make it to this point. There is so much more music to play and give away hoping to leave a piece of me with them. As I play I have another great grandbaby on the way. will my music be the only way they get to know me. I guess that depends.

This piece has other instruments, 4 tracks, which often changes the story. I have also uploaded just the piano where all the music begins. The music is layered one improv over the others. There is no mixing, only what I hear in my head as I play. It can't be changed. It is what it is, what I'm feeling at that moment.  The music is completed usually in 20-30 minutes. It either works or it doesn't.

The Beginning and the End

My music pieces are all piano improvisations expressing emotions. It is music telling stories without the words. In my earIy years I sang and played piano in piano bars or fronted bands  I've been composing, teaching and performing most of my life.  I'm getting old(er) now 😔 but the great thing about creating music is it gets better the longer you play, and you have more to write about! 

This is what I leave of me to my generations to come who wonder where their desire to make music comes from. My mother also played. I learned recently that my grandmother and great grandmother were both accomplished pianists when they were young. My great grandmother sang and danced in minstrel shows in the early 1900's. I know have great-grandchildren. They will know who I am through my music. When I am gone my music will still be here. What a wonderful thought!

Sonni Quick

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