When I was a child, from time to time my father would take me, along with my siblings, to visit my grandparents in Greenwich Village. I remember one such occasion having my portrait sketched in colored charcoal by some bohemian street artist, and, though I didn’t know it then, I now realize that, at the same time and in that same neighborhood, a very different kind of art was being created: Joan Mitchell and the other members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism were hard at work confronting chaos on a canvas.

Some years later, as a student at the Manhattan School of Music, I learned of how this art movement blossomed in the midst of that Italian immigrant community, and since that time the Village has always been associated in my memory both with painters like Mitchell and with pasta primavera. I resolved, as a fledgeling composer, to transfer something of the essence of that colorful magic into the medium of sound, but found myself, then, and in subsequent attempts, unable to succeed.

Now at long last, returning to the style of my youth, but with the benefit of experience, I think perhaps I’ve managed a few good pages. But the world has changed in th fifty years since these paintings were created. And so it is that pianist Moonyoung Yang persuaded me to engage videographer Chulsoon Jung, who has reinvented Mitchell’s works with the aid of modern technology. To both these artists I am grateful.