From Within

General Info
This CD 'From Within' is Music designed specificly for Relaxation.

This CD is 1 of 6 CDs that together total over 60 musical compositions and are a representative sampling of over 800 musical compositions composed by Richard Strunk over the course of the past 3 decades (1974 - 2007). A substantial number of Rick's 800+ musical compositions are Classical pieces for solo instrumental players and include works for almost all the instruments existing within the modern symphony orchestra. There is also a large body of chamber music by Rick composed for both Classical ensembles such as String Quartets; Piano Trios etc, plus much that is written for Jazz quartets and quintets that utilize the fusing of either Pop song and/or Classical work with Jazz, as well as electronic music and some larger orchestra works too. Occasionally Rick has also written some Pop/Rock tunes through the years too. More CDs are coming soon. Enjoy!

Description:
This miniature work invokes a pre-dawn ambivalent mood through the use of a series of secondary-dominates without sevenths, but merely open 5ths with 2nds rather than 3rds. It is in essence pan-tonal since it can equally satisfyingly cadence on any of the ‘chords’ within the harmonic progression pattern of the piece. Since it begins in ‘a’ it also ends in ‘a’, but do to the ambivalent harmonic nature of the work (cycling around the circle of P5ths) it could have ended in any key. The ending is made definite by at last adding a third (minor in this case) in the final chord. Because of this harmonic ambivalence coupled with the simple rhythmic and melodic motives this work evokes that almost undefinable moment preceding dawns lighting upon the horizon and the timbre quality chosen also helps to instill a sense of anticipation never quite fulfilled and a floating feeling never quite grounded.

Description:
This works style is both homophonic and meditative and scored for flute, digital piano, strings, bass and drum set. This work is unabashedly tonal yet hopefully with no pretension or any stale uncreative use of tonal cliché. In Essence the same formal techniques were utilized for ‘Waves’ as were employed in ‘Gentle Surf’ and once again is but a detail taken and expanded from a more involved poly-tonal work. Again the purpose of this work is also for meditation, relaxation, and simple enjoyment of accompanied melody.

Description:
(?c. Spring / ‘98) Trance Music No 2 or "Wedding Music" was Commissioned by Mr. Nathaniel Borenstein as a gift for his wife Trina on their 20th wedding anniversary.This work is both minimalist and meditative and is scored for 2 digital pianos. This work is essentially very much alike to ‘Trance music no. 1’ although with brighter timbre and registrar use of the instruments. This work is stylistically a minimal work and Arranged for 2 keyboards (A piano Duo). I was drawing on influences from Terry Riley’s early keyboard works, as well as, my own experiences of playing in an Indonesia Gamelan back in my College years. It was commissioned by Nathaniel Borenstein as a gift to his wife Trina Borenstein and is dedicated to her for their 20th wedding anniversary. The tolling Bells count out the 20 years with a few extra to grow on.
It is also a part of my Kalediscopic variations using the linguistic nterval pulled from piece.

Description:
This works style is both homophonic and meditative and includes saxopone, digital piano, strings, bass and drum set. This work is unabashedly tonal yet hopefully with no pretension or any stale uncreative use of tonal cliché. In Essence the same formal techniques were utilized for ‘Evening Star ’ as were employed in ‘Gentle Surf’ and 'Waves'. Again the purpose of this work is also for meditation, relaxation, and simple enjoyment of accompanied melody.

Description:

(c. 11 / 16 / ‘91 (Revised 2 / 28 / ‘95)) This arangement of The River is scored for Violin, Vibes, ‘Cello and Synth or Tape. This was originally a vocal work. The words that go with the original song version are from Scripture. “Guard your heart, for from there flow the springs of life.”

This is a simple straight forward minimalist work for an ensemble. The form is varied with each performance since although completely composed it is written in a multitude of sections that can be played in any order with any combination of parts and repeated at will by the performers choice either preplanned before the performance or spontaneously during the performance; the piece still comes out overall sounding similar to what you will hear in this rendition. A slight combining of aleatoric (John Cage) formal means with preconceived composed integrated structures is the basic formal idea. The primary intervals employed are repetitive and drone like use of M2nds.

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