Joy Explosion!

Composer’s Notes:
The Big Sandy Suite was commissioned in 2007 to celebrate the release of a young man who had been incarcerated for seven years in a federal prison.    While in prison, this young man focused his time on drawing and visual arts.    Seven pieces of his prison art were used to form an ‘aural image’ of what the art work would sound like when set to music—the Big Sandy is the result.    Although originally written for jazz ensemble, three of the movements have been transcribed for piano duets—EMPS, Bewilderness, and Joy Explosion!
This movement, Joy Explosion! celebrates the release from imprisonment.    What would the utter, explosive joy of freedom sound like?   What would the wonderment of a sunrise over a mountain sound like?   This duet is in ternary form—the A sections are the utter joy; the B section is the reflective, quiet mood of wonderment and awe.    

Performance Notes:
    This piece is written for a duet—one piano, four hands.    It can, of course, be played on two pianos with the four hands but the music is written with both primo and secondo ‘stacked’ on the same system.  When notated this way, both the primo and secondo pianists are fully aware of the music and can readily see the notation and keyboard position of the duet partner.   Another positive factor for this type of piano duet notation is availability of pianos in performance venues—it is quite common to have only one piano at the venue.