WILDFLOWER

Well, we finally made it to May - and I think the six month Tennessee winter is over (is that a slight exaggeration?). The ice floes are melting and the penguins have apparently left to spend the summer in northern Canada.

There was a light frost a few nights ago and I still have heavy blankets on the bed. And I drank hot chocolate last night.
But today was sunny and 78 degrees (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in outer Mongolia). I'm very cautiously optimistic.....

So, in honor of May Day - I'm offering wildflowers - - in the form of a piano rag, composed by Clarence Williams (1893-1965) and first published in 1916.

Composer Clarence Williams

I recorded this about twenty years ago, without ever hearing anyone else play it. Later, when I heard several versions by other pianists I was surprised that they all (including Clarence Williams himself) play it much faster than I do.

My initial interpretative intuition  is that this is a sweet, simple, tender piece of music - and playing it very quickly does it an injustice. In fact, if I ever decided to record it again, I'd probably play it just as slow, but with more "feeling" and tenderness.

One more thing:
As usual, I used the software Audacity to transfer my old recording to an mp3 file. For some reason the mp3 file contained a lot of VERY annoying skips and jumps that aren't in my original recording.

So, I decided to transfer the mp3 file to a WAV file (which usually improves the audio quality). Unfortunately there's only a slight improvement. My over-sensitive musical ear STILL hears some slight skips and jumps - and the final chord of the song is rudely cut short. 

This probably has no meaning to others, but when it comes to my recordings I am a perfectionist.

I was initially going to use photos of wildflowers for my video - but decided to use lovely Victorian and Edwardian ladies instead. 

As always, video is best viewed full-screen.