In “Homage to Rachmaninov” I used the first three chords of his very famous Prelude in C# Minor. I simply began improvising using those three chords as a starting point for an exploration of major and minor chords with a great deal of morphing. But next I used the Quartet of chords idea to modulate, which means I composed this music a couple of months before I invented a name for the concept.

Modulating…

In general when I write this kind of music I attempt to wander as far away as possible from the beginning key to avoid anything predictable. Then I attempt to get back to the original key in the most unusual way. I want everything to be a surprise. I want it to be unexpected when I get to some strange place, and I want it to be a mystery how I get back to the home key again.

For pictures I chose as many paintings as I could find of Russian winters.

This time rather than cropping the pictures to a 16 by 9 standard, I framed them. I attempted to keep each painting exactly as it was apparently meant to be seen. Then I simply put borders around each one with the most complementary color I could pick to frame each painting.