Various Artists - Luis Pine: Times of Day - Chamber Music for Winds, Cello and Piano (2020)

Recording music is like painting a picture. A master painter rarely produces a work of quality, a work of precision and depth on the first attempt. The painter studies colors and shadows and revises the painting; the musician studies the score and rehearses the piece one more time. Both artists hope the right combination of elements finds its way to the canvas and the microphone, thus making the whole piece come alive in a way that resonates within the viewer, the listener.

This album reveals performances that emerged and blossomed with an earthy beauty, an authenticity in the absolute spirit of the music. Times of Day was birthed and has its context in nature. It follows the light. From the breaking of day, to the brightness of high noon, to the last soft strands of the golden hour. To the blue-black skies of night where illumination and dreams pull us, to the gravity that pulls the tides over the shores like a blanket, to the moon that waxes and wanes and casts shadows through the trees.

When we walk about in the daytime hours, we notice how light alters the atmosphere of the spaces we encounter. The light weaves patterns through leaves and paths, across tufts of moss and blades of grass. Those changes of light, in turn, spark a mystical awareness of what is somehow changeless in us: that inner knowing or experience that makes us feel as if we are infinite, having no beginning nor end. Light has a way of provoking wonder, perhaps because it corresponds to consciousness; we speak of the 'lights coming on'. It brings a kind of comfort to see it. It warms. It illuminates. All its degrees of brightness and intensity capture in a moment a refined picture, even when framing mere specks of dust.

If we imagine the day as a metaphor for life on earth, we can see the emotional and psychological effects the sun impresses upon us as it moves across the sky. Its different angles influence different perspectives. This aspect of our connection, resonance and communion with the natural world is a through-line in Times of Day, even as day turns into night. The same can be said of the night as a metaphor for life, as the absence of light impresses itself upon us. It presents an opportunity to listen to the quiet the silence even and to visit the vast space where the presence of our inner light may become more evident.

The nighttime aspect of this album provides a contrast to being and traveling in the journey of the day. It is a synthesis of the purity of solar midnight, when it is most dark, and the floating quality that is rest and sleep. It is, as in nature, the immense ocean under the canopy of the ink-dark star-dusted sky; here, where we are still in the company of flora and fauna and lulled to sleep, we see visions and dream dreams. Even when our bodies sleep, that limitless space gives us the freedom to dream what went unprocessed in our waking hours. We experience an invitation to explore the parts of us that need grounding, that need to find or return to being. That same inner light which daylight affirms and which darkness makes prominent proves a trustworthy guide.

The idea for Times of Day to become a full album of my music started unawares. After I composed Evening for flute and cello, I wondered what the same instrumental combination would reveal for the contrasting idea of dawn. After Dawn was written, the thought came to write a wind quintet with five movements for five distinct times of the day. Before long, I realized there was almost enough material for an album. Solar Midnight, a nocturne for clarinet and piano, soon came into being and the program was complete. In the end, the concept turned out to be about natural light and our experience of time in nature. These times of day are like seasons in a 24-hour cycle, with each revealing something different and enlightening about ourselves.