Imagine your life without the one book, movie, or album that shaped your life. What would be different about you?
Two piano concertos, not a book or a film: Rachmaninoff's 2-nd and 3rd and Grieg's A minor. I keep coming back to them — not just listening, but picking them out on the piano, chord by chord, chasing the ones that aren't obvious.
Without them I think I'd have settled for the plain triad in everything: they taught me that the real pleasure is in the chord you have to search for, that force and tenderness aren't opposites, and that the sharpest joy can be something no one else sees or hears.
Photos by David Pearl