Duplicitous Fits and Starts

For solo piano
Length: 6:30
Difficulty rating (1-5): 4

• Listen to a performance by pianist George Lopez on Soundcloud. ​
• View a PDF score excerpt
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The title "Duplicitous Fits and Starts" exactly describes the musical material of the piece, which keeps getting derailed just as it gets going, until the very end of the piece. It’s about the various negative states that pop up as the spiritually-striving individual works towards enlightenment—the makyo that plague the Zen practitioner on the way to satori, the false idols that tempt the Christian working toward salvation, etc.
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"Duplicitous Fits and Starts" was written for my Plymouth State University colleague Carleen Graff, and premiered by her at PSU. She’s played it at other venues, including Southern Methodist University. Lucia Unrau has also played it, at Bluffton College in Ohio.