Connor Chee: Sandpainting for Piano No. 14: Northern Clouds from Sandpaintings for Piano (2021) 

Connor Chee: Sandpainting for Piano No. 14: Northern Clouds from Sandpaintings for Piano (2021)
Joel Schoenhals, piano
www.connorchee.com
/ @connorchee
www.joelschoenhals.com
/ @joelschoenhals
Executive Producer: Joel Schoenhals
Co-producers: Paul Eachus and Dan Harteau
Recording Engineer: Paul Eachus
Editing and Mastering Engineer: Paul Eachus
Piano Preparation: Dan Harteau
Album art: Jason Parrish - www.jmparrishfineart.com
Cover design: Greg Knollmeyer
Location: At home in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Piano: Steinway Model D 213668
Recorded in May 2022
Sandpaintings for Piano (2021)
Sandpaintings for Piano (2021) was commissioned by pianist Joel Schoenhals and is a forty-five minute work that includes four sets of four pieces.
“When composing the music for my album Scenes from Dinétah, I knew that I wanted to have a visual aspect to the album through a series of music videos. Along the same lines of that visual inspiration, I decided to refer to some traditional Diné visual art for this commission: sandpaintings. Sandpaintings are created by carefully sprinkling different colored sand to create paintings. Traditionally, they serve a curative purpose, and are used in a variety of ceremonies. Unlike the Diné sandpaintings one might see displayed for aesthetic and artistic purposes, the healing sandpaintings contain sacred elements, and they exist only during the ceremony. I feel a strong parallel with music here, in that they only exist while the ritual is performed. While there are sacred sandpaintings that should not be used or created outside of ceremony, I took inspiration from several common elements in sandpaintings: sacred stones, clouds, lightning, and the sacred mountains.
The number four is sacred to the Diné, and this is often related to the four directions. In that sense, many sandpaintings will depict elements four times-once in each direction. In the traditional dwelling (known as a hogan), the door always faces East to greet the rising sun. When entering, you must always move clockwise around the center of this circular dwelling. Some sandpaintings share this format, having a circle with an opening towards the east, and the sandpaintings within shown in each of the four directions. For this reason,Sandpaintings for Piano begins with four pieces based on the Eastern direction and continues clockwise to the South, West, and finally the North.
I composed the subjects for the Northern direction first and derived the content for each direction from those original themes. Each piece in the Eastern direction is an inversion of the original Northern themes. Each work in the Southern direction is a retrograde inversion, and each work in the Western direction is a retrograde. Thus, the theme for each piece is carefully related to its counterparts in each direction.
Just as a sandpainting might depict a mountain in each direction that rotates as it is drawn, these musical pieces have the same theme that “rotates'' through this series of permutations. Each piece's melody is also the reflection of the piece opposite if placed in a circle with four directions. Thus, pieces in the Eastern and Western directions are retrograde inversions of each other and pieces in the Southern and Northern directions are retrograde inversions of each other.
Finally, the melodies are presented in their original and complete form in the Northern direction. In this sense, once the music has been played to completion from East to North, each theme has found balance in its true form - just as traditional sandpaintings serve to bring balance to life.” - Connor Chee (www.connorchee.com)
Beyond four sets of four pieces, the number four permeates Sandpaintings, just as it does Navajo life and philosophy. Within each piece, this symbolism expresses as four repetitions of a subject, each cast in a different texture, four repetitions of chords as frames to begin and end pieces, and harmonies built on fourths and the inversion fifths.
Chee paints with music, using recurring motives to characterize each sacred element. The sacred stones pieces each begin with a unison chant. Cloud pieces feature tone clusters and rain-like improvisatory passages. Striking gestures and dotted rhythms musically paint lightning. Block chords and minimalistic textures symbolize mountains. Through these methods, Chee organically balances unity and variety within this large-scale work.