Not sure this is the right place to say it, but I am so sorry both for your loss and the way in which it came about.

Very moving piece. I feel the depth of emotion.

I like this one. First and foremost, it's music.

My heart-felt condolences for the loss of your mother, Gary. This piece is a beautiful tribute.

I began composing this work around the time I learned that my 94-year old mother (who was fully vaccinated and boosted and had kept herself in isolation for two years)had contracted Covid 19 from one of her care-givers. I learned this horrific news on February 14th, 2022. Kaiser Hospital in Oakland was sluggish in its response when I called for a doctor and asked the powers that be to expedite treating her for Covid. Had Kaiser been sufficiently quick in its response to the immediate crisis, my mother may very well have survived another few years and avoided an absolutely horrible death. In the day or two before she died I heard her calling out for her grandmother in German over the telephone. Suffice it to say, I will be haunted by the sound of her anguished voice for the rest of my life. She passed away from Covid on February 24th, 2022 (the day Russia invaded Ukraine) at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California. She was born Marianne Ruth Neustädter in Berlin, Germany on August 20th, 1927. Her family (mother, father, and brother) was forced into exile by the Nazis. Other branches of the family were not as fortunate. Her uncle's family (including his wife and two very young children)were all murdered in Auschwitz in March, 1943. I just turned 65 yesterday (April 14th, 2022) and remember my mother as an omnipresent presence in my life. She was a force of nature, to be sure. Her absence is deeply felt and she will be sorely missed. Pictured here is her empty house after my brother and I finished cleaning it out a couple of weeks ago. We had no choice but to virtually obliterate her identity in the process. I knew it would be bad but it was actually much worse than I ever expected it to be. This is the house on Russell Street (near College Avenue) in Berkeley where my mother resided for 55 years (since 1967) after selling the home where I spent much of my early childhood (from 1960-67) that was located on Haste Street (near Telegraph Avenue) on a block  now famously known as "People's Park." At the time of this writing I have not yet received the photo albums from her estate, for I would otherwise have provided a photograph of my mother instead of one of her empty house. Nevertheless, I have titled the piece after the vacant feeling of being inside her home in my final days in Berkeley (for 62 years)—a town to which I am unlikely ever to return. I composed this piece while distracted by all the work that had to be done after my mother's passing. I have finally been able to focus on completing it. It seems a fitting tribute to her. I hope she has found a happier place. May she rest in peace! For more information on me and my music, please feel free to visit my website at: www.composergarynoland.com

EMPTY DWELLING for piano—in memoriam Marianne Ruth Noland (1927-2022)

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

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