"Ricorrenze" (lit. "Recurrences") is a piece for solo piano, built on a simple idea: nine notes, organized in reoccurring intervals (3 fourths, one ascending and the other two descending), hence the title... The Italian word can also mean "celebrations"; when I wrote it, we had just celebrated my daughter's tenth birthday. In the middle of the piece another basic pattern appears, consisting of two overlapping fifths; I first came up with this idea when I was a kid, probably around Federica's age, improvising at the piano. I recorded it on a tape, which many years later disappeared... But the idea was stuck in my head. So here it is again, in a very different context, dedicated to Federica and to my younger self!

"Arabesque" was loosely inspired by Debussy's first piano Arabesque; while writing it, however, I was thinking more of Bach's music, how he was able to produce the illusion of polyphony by "atomizing" chords into one, endlessly winding line of melody-harmony. The tribute to Bach becomes fairly obvious toward the end of the piece.

Commissioned by the Cleveland Composers Guild for the 2024 "Creativity Concert" in Cleveland, Ohio.