Charlie Williams, piano.
Recorded live at the 3Arts Club of Chicago on January 20, 2003.

The Road is a "novel" for solo piano, which when completed will contain about seven hours of music. I think of this music as a novel because it is meant primarily to be read (played) by a single person alone in a room, at a speed and for a duration determined by that person, independently of the conventions of concert performance. (This same person may also perform portions of the music for an audience.) Many of the best-known works in the classical keyboard literature-- Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are examples-- are similarly intended primarily for home consumption, rather than public performance. I like to think of The Road as a continuation of this classical tradition.

The entire work consists of eight parts, each of which contains eight "miles", or movements. (The entire road contains sixty-four "miles".) Part I ("Turns," Miles 1-8, 30 minutes) is a set of eight studies, some of which resemble fugues. No. 4 is a piano arrangement of a choral piece protesting the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific, which I wrote on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which left a traumatic impression on me as a seven-year-old in 1945. Part I is dedicated to Max Cykiert. The other completed part titles are: II - Tracks; III ­ Tramps; IV - Stops; V - A Few Knocks; VI - Traveling with Children; VII - Final Preparations.

--Program note by the composer

Mile 1:
Mile 2:
Mile 3:
Mile 4:
Mile 5:
Mile 6:
Mile 7:
Mile 8: