Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That promo code is also good for everything on the site, so my full discography is under $10.
A couple of my blogger buddies very kind wrote little blurbs about Koi Dance, so I thought I’d share them today:
Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That means it’s $1 for twelve tracks of great music (that promo code is also good for everything on the site).
As such, I’m featuring some posts related to Koi Dance (and the title track, “Koi Dance”):
“New Music Tuesday II: ‘Koi Dance’” – It’s kind of crazy that this post was only the second installment of New Music Tuesday! It’s pretty auspicious, and it indicates how long I’ve been working on Koi Dance.
“Press Release for 🐟Koi Dance🐟” – I sent this press release to the local newspaper in the hopes I’d get some kind of interview or something. At the time of writing I’m not sure if they’ve put anything about it into this week’s issue, but we shall see!
Last summer I filled in for the pianist of the First United Methodist Church here in our new little town. Their regular pianist was, until this past Sunday, teen phenom John Patrick Hutchinson, who is already a world-class classical pianist at the age of seventeen (actually, I think he turns eighteen today, based on my foggy recollection of the pre-concert notes; happy birthday, JPH!). Hutchinson gave a farewell concert called A Final Measure: Notes Before Departure this past Sunday evening at the church; it’s his farewell because he’ll be heading to conservatory in a couple of weeks.
Instead of being held in the sanctuary, where the piano is unfortunately hidden by the organ, it was held in a small chamber just off of the sanctuary—and it was packed. The old men of the church started grabbing additional chairs from various Sunday School classrooms and other church hidey-holes as attendees poured in—as they continued to do well after the advertised start of the program. It was really amazing seeing, in this small city in an obscure corner of South Carolina, several dozen people—I estimated about 80 people in attendance—turning out to hear this young man play.
The size of the crowd matched the size of the talent. Hutchinson played with a beautiful, perceptive touch, drawing out the colors of each piece. His dynamics were varied and intense, and he played the technical passages of each piece with a light deftness that made the notes almost float.
The program was very balanced between Romantic, Impressionistic, Baroque, and modern classical. He opened with Franz Schubert‘s Sonata in A Major, D. 664, a piece from the first half of the eighteenth century that foreshadows some of the developments of the latter half of that century. There were harmonies and colorings of chords that sounded almost twentieth-century in nature; imagine how daring this piece would have been in Schubert’s time!
I did not record any of his performance—refreshing, there were no cell phones whipped out during the recital—but I’ll share performances of his pieces from other people. Here’s Alexander Gavrylyuk playing the Schubert:
After this three-part sonata, we had a brief intermission. Hutchinson resumed the second half with the Andante from Alexander Scriabin‘s Sonata No. 2 in G# Minor, Op. 19 (Sonata-Fantasy). The piece hinted at the developments in tonal experimentation of the early twentieth century (apparently, Scriabin developed his own system of atonality independent of Arnold Schoenberg‘s [in?]famous twelve-tone composing system). This piece balanced late-stage Romanticism (and even Impressionism) with some of those more—shall we say—daring innovations of the early twentieth century; overall, though, I’d say it evoked Chopin.
Here’s Yunchan Lim playing the piece:
Next came J.S. Bach‘s Prelude and Fugue in D Minor (not to be confused with his famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the one always heard in scary movies). I love a good fugue, and this piece really highlighted Hutchinson’s precision, as well as Bach’s beautifully mathematical mind. It was a shorter piece, which made for a nice little refreshment after the longer Sonata-Fantasy.
Here’s a performance by Marta Czech:
Hutchinson closed with the most modern classical piece of the program, Emma Lou Diemer‘s Serenade/Toccata. It’s a piece that experiments with lively polyrhythms and often harsh dissonances, but does so without descending into pure noise territory—the dissonances serve a dynamic and musical purpose. There are also some flowing and painterly sections, which give the piece something of a contemplative yin to the more experimental yang.
Here’s a performance from my alma mater, the University of South Carolina, performed here by Paige Broadworth on 4 February 2024:
After a standing ovation, Hutchinson returned to the piano to play a jaunty ragtime tune. I’m not sure of the title of the piece, but it was quite fun. The little old lady sitting next to me started telling me her whole life story during the encore, so I couldn’t quite appreciate the piece in full, but it was fun and bouncy.
If I had to choose one word to sum up this recital, I’d pick “color.” Hutchinson pulled the unique tonal colors out of each piece; indeed, the program, other than perhaps the Bach selection from The Well-Tempered Clavier, seemed to focus on pieces with rich, complex tone colors. And like a master painter, Hutchinson interpreted the colors of each piece with a skill beyond his years.
Also: what a gift! This church has been blessed with a phenomenal young talent; so has the town. It is proof that even—perhaps often—it is in out-of-the-way places where talents are bursting forth. Yes, perhaps those provincial talents inevitably are drawn to the cultural centers—New York City, LA, Nashville, Des Moines—but they come from all across our vast, great nation.
All I can say is, bravo, Mr. Hutchinson! We hope you come back home for another performance soon.
Last summer I served as the fill-in pianist for the local United Methodist Church in what became our new town. You can read about that here. Two Sundays ago I was invited to play for the local Presbyterian Church for their annual camp service.
What is a “hedge pianist”? Essentially, it’s a term I’ve coined for a freelance/unaffiliated pianist-for-hire. The “hedge” comes from the concept of a “hedge knight“; the hedge knight is a landless, traveling knight who takes work where he can, hoping his skills will land him in the retinue of some great lord, with all the benefits that come with it. With just his horse, armor, and arms, the hedge knight seeks to prove his skill in tournaments and small conflicts.
Similarly, a “hedge pianist” is a masterless pianist traveling about, taking gigs where they come, with a possible interest in gaining enough renown to land a cushy weekly church gig, or playing Friday nights at an upscale eatery. It’s also just a nerdy (or cool?) way of making playing as a fill-in pianist at local churches sound like I’m some kind of musical ronin roaming about the countryside looking for a piano to play.
Regardless, I had the opportunity to play that role two Sundays back for the local Presbyterian Church. The church has a “camp” service every year in preparation for their Vacation Bible School, and the pastor asked if I could play some hymns and all the usual pieces for High Church Protestant services, namely “Doxology” and the “Gloria Patri.” Naturally, I agreed.
The ChapelA Gazebo with a Bent CrossThe Campground and Buildings
The service was held at a campsite owned and maintained by the Southern Baptist church that Dr. Wife and I attend. It’s a beautiful little spot about twenty minutes outside of town, tucked away among the pine trees. The grounds and buildings are very well-maintained. I had some trepidation that the service would take place outdoors, which would present two inconveniences: the intense South Carolina summer heat, and the wind blowing my music everywhere.
Fortunately, the camp has a commodious (and air-conditioned) chapel, where a responsive Yamaha digital piano waited for me. There was also a delectable fried chicken lunch on the other side of the service.
Just a reminder that everything is still 90% off with promo code moving at my Bandcamp page.
While packing up for the big move I found quite a few fun little items and mementos: old notebooks from my childhood; photographs with friends in our doughy youths; doodles from former students who now likely have families of their own; bits of music I’d composed. One of the coolest finds was my old Yamaha PortaSound PSS-50:
This little keyboard has been in my family for as long as I can remember. I’m certain it was my older brother‘s keyboard, but through years of use it became “mine” in that way that childhood items do among siblings. The keyboard is likely just a few years younger than me, which would mean it’s been around for nearly four decades.
And it still works—well, mostly. The keys from the first F through the first D no longer play, but every key from Eb up to that third C work beautifully. It runs on six AA batteries, which I apparently changed out recently, because I was jamming on this little puppy before packing it.
In my early, lo-fi-because-I-didn’t-know-any-better days, I recorded quite a few pieces with this PSS-50 plugged into my brother’s Crate guitar amp with an old computer microphone dangling in front of the amp’s horn (I’m going to release those recordings one day). In the super early days, I’d record separate WAV files using Sound Recorder, then combine them using the same software, hoping everything lined up properly; Adobe Audition 1.5 smoothed that over for me, though.
I still remember some of the classic voices on this keyboard: “26” cues up an “Electric Guitar” sound which has this amazing distortion to it while still sounding clean enough to use melodically. The default “00” is a “Trumpet” that, to me, is the standard sound any synthesizer should have. Indeed, there is a more robust Yamaha synth from this era that someone donated to the school years ago, and “Brass 1” is the default voice when starting the keyboard.
That yellow “Demo” button played an instrumental version of the song “Venus.” My older brother changed the lyrics to “Booty, Booty, Booty, Come Home,” which he said was the theme song for my band, which he initially named “Booty and the Bootettes” before changing it to “Booty and the Flaming Booties.”
As you can see, dear reader, this keyboard and I share a lot of history together. If it ever stops playing entirely, I’m going to have to write to Yamaha to repair it. They’ll probably have to bring their last remaining 1980s consumer mini-keyboard specialist out of retirement/cryogenic freezing to do so, but I want this little guy handed down to (God Willing) my little guys!
So it was that I picked ol’ PSS-50 up and improvised a little hornpipe using “17”—“Reed Organ”:
Yours portly is continuing to work on his collection of pond-based tunes, Koi Dance. I introduced some rosy red minnows to our koi pond about a month ago, which inspired today’s piece.
It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold. I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:
I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now. It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.
I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”
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Now that it’s 2026, it’s time to make a few changes to the blog. One of those overdue changes comes to the long-running weekly feature Open Mic Adventures.
According to a hasty review of my records, I ceased playing open mics—and, indeed, most live gigs outside of private bookings—in 2025. I simply lacked the time and energy—and interest. I much prefer rehearsing my students so they can play live.
That’s been one of the big changes in my life in recent years. I enjoy playing live, but as I get older, going to open mic nights and playing songs I wrote a decade (or more) ago lost its luster. It’s also amazing how once I got engaged (and now married), my desire to show off in coffee shops plummeted. If I’m going to play to impress anyone—always a dubious proposition—it’s going to be for Dr. Wife.
That’s all to say that I’m not ending Open Mic Adventures, per se—there’s always that chance I’ll get that itch to play and get some good video in the process—but that I’m shifting it into something more accurate: New Music Tuesday. The “Open Mic” appellation ceased to be accurate for most of 2025, as I featured more and more of my original electronic compositions.
Of course, good ol’ WordPress.com makes it easy to put together these weekly, multimedia posts. One thing I’ve come to love about WordPress.com is how intuitive it is to upload all sorts of media.
For example, here is today’s featured track, “Herald,” uploaded as a beautifully lossless WAV file using the “Audio” block:
I found this brief piece scribbled on a red tardy slip I had in my desk. I apparently wrote it down on 8 August 2023, and finally put it into my music composition software this morning. It’s a very simple, quick piece, indicative of the kinds of etudes I was composing at that time. As such, “Herald” is a brief piano fanfare, suitable for players at most levels.
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Years ago, my dear mom found a copy of The Usborne Book of Piano Classics (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you) at a book sale and picked it up for me. I have used that book countless times over the years for gigs, piano lessons, practice, arranging, etc. My High School and Middle School Music Ensembles have performed arrangements based on those in the book many times at the annual South Carolina Independent School Association Music Festival.
While it consists of piano arrangements of famous pieces from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, I often play the pieces on saxophone. I found myself pulling the book out in preparation for a gig this past Sunday (a wedding proposal—the client’s girlfriend said yes!), and came upon a melancholy piece from the Baroque composer Henry Purcell, “When I am laid in earth,” perhaps better known as “Dido’s Lament.” It’s from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas.
