Manipulação

for solo guitar (2004), 2’30”

“Since moving to Inwood, the Northern-most neighborhood on the island of Manhattan, friends constantly joke that I now live in Canada. While a visit to my home by some friends who are actually from Canada forever disabused me of that notion, Inwood is certainly further uptown from "uptown" as "uptown" is from "downtown." Manipulação is the next phase of my "beyond uptown" music (or "so-far-uptown-it's-downtown" music), another attempt at reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable. While the entire pitch content is derived from a tone row, the rhythm is strictly bossa-nova. This is in part a tribute to the great Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso who, while on stage at the Beacon Theatre in NYC's Upper West Side many years back, professed his admiration for Arnold Schoenberg. It is also a realization that if Inwood were truly in Canada, then "downtown," based on proportional distances, should probably be much further south than Miami, possibly somewhere in Brazil!