Ezra Laderman, Vol. 6

Ezra Laderman writes: "I love writing tunes and the pull to a specific key or note. I take pleasure in perpetual variation, creating whole blocks of music derived from small motivic cells. I enjoy putting into motion a number of musical issues and making them work together in a cohesive, symbiotic manner. I find the disjunct note, silence, and space, a powerful metaphor...and most of all I thrill to a long line, an arch that weaves and spins itself out giving a sense of completeness, of wholeness. I do not want to forsake this musical world that I inhabit. The challenge is to make it work, to make the music relevant for our time, for it to be evocative and for the music to engage the heart and the mind. On a different level, there is a personal, emotional, fallible, human level that is within each of us, one that I find not easily verbalized or articulated. The language of music has enabled me to go to that source, to communicate those inner feelings. We have collectively lived through joy, tragedy, uncertainty, determination, to mention but four dimensions of life. Without furling out the banner and showing my stripes, I have been able to express myself. What I have done has given me great satisfaction. Using these disparate tools together has made it possible for me to express these feelings persuasively, consciously, or intuitively. At least, it is my hope that I have done so. It is a life spent composing my way, and trusting that it reaches and speaks to you, and it will stand the test of time...My early works are clearly grounded in tonality, spiked with dissonance. In the middle years, my music is absorbed in atonality and serial techniques. These last years my compositions have embraced all that has been meaningful to me over a lifetime of creativity. And it is very apparent in the works that make up this CD."