Liner Notes: Rick Mealey Movement Along A Path Improvisations and Meditations 2009 1. Gusts To Thirty 3:41 2. Four Strong Hands 5:32 3. Movement Along A Path 10:51 4. Day Down 4:24 5. Bird In The House 1:50 6. Greet My Friends 3:53 7. From A Lookout 9:51 8. Cold Rain At Lincroft (Danielle's Mood I) 6:18 9. Elegy 8:39 total program time 55:01 Auto-composed, performed, engineered, and produced by Rick Mealey except Elegy composed by Rick Mealey and Nolan Alexander All selections published by @Fulcrum Pty Recorded with Apple Logic Studio at The Sanctum Sanctorum II, Trumbull CT, late March to early April 2009 Except Bird In The House and Greet My Friends, recorded in the sanctuary of Church of the Redeemer, UCC, New Haven CT, July 2008 I completed this album in the spirit of a particular method and a specific idea. The method: during all but the summer months at my church, the choir provides service music-- anthems, prayer responses, introits, and so forth-- but in summer, the choir takes off and individual musicians arrange for the weekly service music. When I volunteer for this task (once or twice a season), I generally walk into the sanctuary with the vaguest idea of what I'm going to play on the baby grand down in front of the pulpit; and I rely on the Spirit (that word again) and my own imagination to flesh those ideas out in real time, resulting in largely improvised piano offerings. The idea: in an effort to focus on the creative spirit during this year's Lenten season, a number of us congregants volunteered to undertake a project to be worked on during Lent and completed in time for Easter: some quilted, some knitted, our minister got her loom out of storage and weaved, and me... you are holding my project in your hands now. Initially, I thought I'd collect my various performances over the years, but (except for two pieces) all of them proved either missing or in quite poor shape with respect to audio quality. So I recorded new versions of those pieces I could remember performing for the congregation, and along the way decided that I would use the same method to record entirely new pieces in the same spirit (that word again). Four Strong Hands was an introit to a 2004 service. I improvised over two piano loops of nine notes each, which reminded me of an old mutual fund commercial that gave me nightmares as a child (the title alludes to the fund). For this session I added a few soft electronica touches: beatbox, glitched beatbox, synth bass, and a staccato synth accompaniment as a bed over which to solo. The main body of Movement Along A Path--the part following the aleatory opening section--was one of the first pieces I ever wrote, from 1979. I found myself playing it as a natural progression from that opening, and decided it fit with the overall mood of the album. Back in college, it consisted of a number of episodic chord progressions for which I provided connecting material at the spur of the moment. This recording features new improvised connecting material above and beyond that performed originally. I wrote Elegy with a guitarist friend in 1997, and performed it as an introit in 2005. Turning the last verse into a free-meter section was a spontaneous performance decision during that service, and it became a permanent part of the arrangement. I added upright bass and jazz brush kit to this performance. Bird In The House and Greet My Friends were recorded live at the same service in July 2008, with a Zoom H2 field recorder positioned beneath the soundboard of the sanctuary's Steinway baby grand. On the day, Bird was the offertory and Greet was the anthem; and I was playing not only for the folks in the pews but also for a house sparrow in the support columns of the sanctuary, who had gotten lost and flown inside that morning. The bird abided with us for at least the length of the service. Day Down (coastal North Carolinians' name for evening twilight) and From A Lookout are new, both featuring further soft electronica elements. The solo piano pieces Gusts To Thirty and Cold Rain At Lincroft are new, too, recorded in the same session while (in the case of Gusts) I reacted to atmospheric conditions outside my studio on a particularly dreary late March afternoon, and (in the case of Lincroft) I imagined a precious friend 120 miles away from me physically but very much alive in me there and then, watching the same rain fall, wistful, melancholy, beautiful. All piano parts were recorded in one improvised pass. Any high-pitched squealing you might hear during Lookout is on your playback device and not on the album. Thanks to Monica Bauer for the impetus; Rochelle Stackhouse for her pastoral care and the framework for the Lenten projects; Marguerite Brooks for an unparalleled environment in which to stretch musically in the context of worship; and Joanne, for her continued friendship and love in transition. To Danielle, for all that was, is, and is to come.