Song of the Earth second movement of Sonata No. 2 for solo piano ("Hacklebarney") from the CD Bruce Lazarus, Music for Solo Piano Bruce Lazarus, composer and pianist brucelazarus2k@yahoo.com My "Hacklebarney" sonata was composed in 1984, when I lived in a semi-rural part of north-western New Jersey not far from the hills, forests, and waterfalls of Hacklebarney State Park. I was at the height of my interest in folk song and new age music, and I sought ways of exploring these vital sources of musical material using classical structures. The three-movement sonata is based on original (but folk-sounding) materials, and was premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Hall) in the winter of 1986 with myself at the piano. The second movement, Song of the Earth, available here as a single, is peaceful – composed in the late winter, while the earth rested under snow. a short bio: Composer Bruce Lazarus’ most recent works include Messier Catalogue of Star Clusters and Nebulae - a forty-five minute “astronomical adventure” for solo piano, incidental music and songs for the Marymount Manhattan College production of Good Soul of Szechuan, November Sonata for flute and piano, and Carrolling – a cycle of 15 songs on poems by Lewis Carroll. He studied composition at Juilliard with Vincent Persichetti and Andrew Thomas, earned his B.M. and M.M. in music composition, studied piano privately with Donald Waxman, and later earned his Ph.D in music theory at Rutgers University. Bruce Lazarus resides in New York City. composer's statement At age 11, the music I loved most was Francis Lai’s then-current wordless theme from the French film A Man and a Woman, and Aaron Copland’s El Salon Mexico; the movie music because it used the harmonic vocabulary of Ravel and was easy to sing, the Copland because it had more rhythmic vitality than any rock music I knew. At 14, realizing that building music interested me more than performing it, I chose to become primarily a composer rather than a pianist, an easy teenage decision which initiated a complicated, life-long search for a personal musical voice. 40 years later I describe my music as concise, melodic, rhythmically driven, architectural, cheerfully dissonant, contemporary, subtly allied to jazz and rock, and in turns meditative, humorous, moody, and exuberant. I am interested in science and especially astronomy, and often use astronomical imagery for my more descriptive works. Nothing gratifies me more than overhearing someone casually hum or sing something I’ve written. I think the essence of musical communication lies in the discovery and development of musical ideas which stick in the minds of listeners. I feel I have come to riches when short themes, entire melodies, intriguing rhythms, and novel harmonic progressions capture my imagination and set me on an all-consuming search for permutations and possibilities. Bruce Lazarus 