Weegee — a 1940’s New York tabloid photographer. Film noir in news photography. I wrote eight piano pieces based on his photos. Dark and wild, virtuosic.
Premiere performance, by Jenny Lin
Score (some of the pieces are crazy; see below
The pieces, and their photos:
Gunman Killed By Off-Duty Cop at 344 Broome Street
Car Crash
Lovers at the Palace Theater
Heat Spell
Alone in Their Dream
Accident on Grand Central Station Roof
Simply Add Boiling Water
Crowd at Coney Island
Two of the pieces…
…look impossible to play, as notated. This excerpt comes from “Car Crash”:
The rhythms are crazy, too complex to comprehend. And you, the pianist…your hands are everywhere at once.
But Jenny Lin played this! And also the other crazy piece, “Just Add Boiling Water”:
Important to note — the six other pieces don’t look crazy in the score. Here’s the start of “Heat Spell”:
About the crazy pieces: Here’s some advice I give In the introduction to the score.
Just smile when you look at all the zany tuplets, and treat what you see on the page as, in effect, graphic notation. Showing you more or less what happens when, but without any thoughts about exact rhythm.
Maybe first play at a leisurely tempo, stopping the flow when you need to, till you get the notes under your fingers. Then — and this is the key to making the music sound as I wanted it to — practice using my computer versions ns of the two pieces (which you’ll find online) as click tracks.
In the score I give links to my computer versions — clickable links, if you look at the PDF file on your computer or tablet or phone.