Search - Frank Levin :: Morning to Midnight

he CD showcases the best of my piano music composed over the past two decades and includes my "Morning To Midnight Suite", six selections from my "San Francisco Souvenirs," five seasonal pieces and some other works comprising twenty five tracks and over an hour of music. The Morning to Midnight Suite strives to capture the changing character of the day in five contrasting movements. It is also intended to convey a life cycle theme, that is reflected in the organization of the whole album, with the more youthful-sounding, extroverted works generally placed earlier on, and the quiet, reflective works placed at the end of the CD. Passion is an extended, post-romantic work with virtuosic piano requirements. The San Francisco Souvenirs were composed in the 1980s, and celebrate some local features of my neighborhood that make San Francisco special for me. These reflect my jazz and pop music studies at the time. The Five Seasonal Pieces, also echo the album's life cycle theme and introduce impressionistic harmonies in the Winter and Spring selections. The seven Other Works that conclude the album feature several from my Lyric Suite, some memorial pieces for friends and cats, a Romance that is my most popular teaching piece, and a cheerful Prairie Homecoming inspired by TV and Western movie themes. Stylistically, the compositions are very expressive, varied and visual with each piece conveying a different mood according to the person, time, or place that inspired it. When asked to characterize my crossover classical/popular approach to writing, I answer, "If Chopin took lessons with George Gershwin and Billy Joel, he'd probably sound like me."