Congrats to Gloria Cheng!

I'm very, very, very behind on blogging. The holidays rolled around, I traveled around Asia for three weeks, I got food poisoning...lots of things conspired to keep me from updating this blog. Consequently, there are lots of things to update, including recording sessions with Sussan Deyhim, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and a trio of young Japanese pop stars. (Stay tuned for posts about those sessions, as well some more sneak peaks at my album.)

In the meantime, however, I thought I'd update the Grammy situation. As expected, I came NOWHERE close to winning anything whatsoever. I didn't even make the final five (I was beaten out by, oh...Peter Gabriel...Alan Menken...you may have heard of them.) But the good news is that my extraordinary pianist friend Gloria Cheng won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (Without Orchestra) for her album Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky and Lutoslawski. The compositions may not be everyone's cup of tea (although I think they're fantastic), but there's no denying her extraordinary touch and skill. Here she is accepting her Grammy:

I've had the good fortune of having her record two of my piano pieces for me. One was my Nocturne No. 2 for the low-budget vampire romance movie The Insatiable:

The second is a lullaby called 'Night Sings Its Songs', written for the US theatrical premiere of celebrated Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's play of the same name.

As you can tell, my pieces are quite different from Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky and Witold Lutoslawski (far fewer notes!), but Gloria brings out the beauty of every piece she performs, whether it be modern and dissonant, or traditional and melodic.

Congrats, Gloria!