MILLENNIAL OPENING was conceived and written over a five-week period in the summer of 1999.  Instead of starting with themes, motives, or structural plans, most of the works I have written since 1993 have begun with an electronically transcribed keyboard improvisation.  I use the improvisation as both a blueprint and a Rorschach test to suggest and "grow" the full composition.  An improvisation is like a dream in that only the person involved knows what it really means.  Composition allows me to realize that potential and emphasize that meaning.  For this piece, I developed a fifteen minute work from a three-and-a-half-minute improvisation.  The improvisation is, therefore, partly a moment-to-moment spiritual link to my subconscious, and partly a medium of suggestion or oracle.  The real meaning of the piece gradually materializes as I am writing, and becomes a beacon which guides the work's completion.  

In this case, I felt the unfolding millennium symbolized an unparalleled opportunity.  The technological revolution of the past half century and the resulting multi-cultural synthesis is a monumentally dynamic creative stimulus.  It provides an opportunity for assimilation, understanding, and discovery in scientific, cultural, and philosophical realms as well as the arts.  But sooner or later, as it always does, the revolution will become routine and the dynamic opening will close.  The next opportunity may not appear for a thousand years.   

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