This is the world premiere of my piano piece I entitled Perchance to Dream...What Dreams May Come. Its creation has a bit of a history and it is so fulfilling that it is finally played in a concert, performed here by the inestimable Stephen Tian-You Ai. I started composing this piece in February 2016 when I started having a second resurgence of composing. This melody was part of what I was calling Piano Sonata No. 1, and you can hear the midi version in an earlier video if you'd like, but I highly recommend this live version, which is so fantastically interpreted. In any case, in February 2016, I composed a short first movement that was very classical era style and okay. It was a good first step getting back to composing. I started the second movement which had some of the beginning portions you can hear here, and a middling main theme that I was just not happy with. I then put the project aside and didn't go back to it until a year and a half later.

In January 2017, I chose to go back to school to get a Master in Music and become a teacher. I applied for City College of New York, as that was the closest and easiest school to start at. I had to do a Bachelor's in Music first. The classes started in September, and they sparked my creative desires. My initial idea was to get the music degree, combine it with the Library Science Masters degree I already had and get back to being a librarian. But as I participated in the classes, I started having a creative urge, so I took private composition lessons with Harry Stafylakis, a fantastic composer, who everyone should check out. His lessons were perfect for what I needed and he helped me find ways in which I refined my very raw, very rough ideas into far more beautiful music than I've ever created.

One of the compositions I had wanted to complete was the Piano Sonata No. 1. I went back to the two movements I had completed, added just a bit to the first movement, which is as good as it gets and I won't do more to it. I did large reworks of the second movement. You can listen to the older version of the second movement here if you like (  / sonata-second-movement  ) and see what I worked to refine into this piece. I reworked the main melodic idea to be two part. In the first, slower portion, it was just a descending half step on half notes followed by an answer. In the second, faster half of the piece, as you can hear, the melody takes a far grander shape and bursts with life and energy. One Sunday in November 2017, I worked on this second half for about three hours, and that was the most amazing time creating music that I've had. These themes with all the harmonic motion came alive and I felt so great composing.

From that day forward, my composing skills flourished and thrived, composing many really beautiful pieces. But this piece will always be close to my heart.

A quick note about the title. I don't want it bogged down too much in the baggage of Hamlet, which is obviously impossible. The words in the title matter, and Shakespeare words is the best. The basic idea of the piece is death. In the first half, the protagonist feels death approaching. The middle march section is death's grasp, and the second half is the after-life dream. Sometimes we feel miserable with our lives and just simply desire that escape into a world that cannot harm us anymore. And sometimes it is okay to feel that, and to express that. Whatever may come after death, in the end, doesn't matter, because death is such a finality to life. I know for me, this piece lifts up my spirits and helps me enjoy life more. Our ability to express, particularly through music, the pains we may be feeling, is one of the greatest gifts we humans possess. I hope everyone is able to enjoy this music and my expression.