Awakening

Awakening is my longest-ever album at 29 songs and almost an hour and a half of music, some beginning as scraps from the previous five years of songwriting and some written especially for this album.

This “double album” is structured around the central song Awakening, literally central in that it splits the album in two. It begins with a “winter” of slightly darker pieces that come from a more stressful and lonely place, some with themes of decay and dementia, then pivots upon the 8-minute orchestral progressive rock piece Midnight Math and the title track Awakening (based on a poem I wrote in high school and sung by the talented Liz Philbrick), and finally opens up into a “spring” of lighter, more energetic, optimistic, and jubilant songs, with themes of sunlight and nature.

Though most are instrumental, four of these songs feature my own very much untrained voice, which I had initially refused to publish, but these songs had been kicking around too long to just keep waiting for a better vocal track to come along. Coming to terms with my voice was part of the process of making this album.