When sitting on a long flight; having run out of podcasts or my latest digital book is done, I am drawn to the airline magazine section that shows the route map for the globe. It is fascinating how interconnected the world really is; you can literally be anywhere in a few hours time. This idea has been percolating in me and eventually led to this program. Steve Taylor’s piece “The Dove is Sad” became the center spoke. Based on a Ligeti etude, I started to see how the influence goes beyond the obvious. I chose a different etude to play, one that gave me the same sensation as Taylor’s piece; from there other connections fell into place: Mazzariello’s “Flight School” and “The Last Blackbird” by Justin Merritt were obvious. New works by Merritt, Laura Caviani, Reinaldo Moya, and Linda Buckley will toy with this same flight idea but each using their own unique specialties. Other pieces then bounced off of those strengths, leading to this program that resembles that very map I find myself staring at during my trip across the skies…coming to a venue near you in April 2017.