ENS.2012.4 | 7′
Solo Piano
Utopia Parkway
For most of his life the artist Joseph Cornell lived with his mother in a little house on Utopia Parkway, Queens, and in his garage he quietly made some of the most extraordinary little assemblages art has ever seen. This piece began life as a setting of a poem by Charles Simic, and when I transformed it into a piece for solo piano Simic’s Dime-Store Alchemy, a poetic exploration of Cornell’s life and work, came immediately to mind. Since Utopia Parkway is constructed from small musical boxes endlessly superimposed, I decided to pay tribute to Cornell, an artist whose work has so inspired me over the years, with this little piece.