There was an evening in Florence that feels as vivid now as the moment it happened. It was a night of rain, the kind that hushes a city, softening its machines and animals. The rock-streets glistened, reflecting hazy pools of light from the lanterns overhead. I’d wandered aimlessly until I decided on getting some dinner at a trattoria—one of those unmarked places that seemed to hover between worlds, tucked away from the usual bustle of tourists and noise. It felt like an old secret waiting patiently to be found.
Outside under the awning, the air was cooling, scented with rosemary and olive oil, quiet except for the murmur of voices scattered along the alley. A single candle flickered on my table, casting soft light over the white tablecloth, worn soft by countless hands over countless years. I settled into a chair that felt molded to its place, as if it had always been there, unmovable.
When I ordered the house pasta, it was mostly out of habit, without much expectation. A comfort food, something to pass the time. But when the bowl arrived, I couldn’t help but grin. Here was the chef’s pride—a bowl of golden pasta with nothing but a trickle of olive oil and a dusting of Parmesan. It looked perfect in its simplicity.
I took a bite, and the world tilted. The pasta was rich without being heavy; filling my mouth with flavors that seemed to grow and bloom with each taste. There was an unassuming depth to it, a subtlety that wasn’t designed to dazzle but to invite. I found myself slowing down, savoring each bite, listening to the soft patter of rain on the stones. It felt like a ritual, as though I’d been ushered into a kind of meditation, and the pasta was somehow the teacher.
As I sat there, marveling at the flavor, the chef wandered over, wiping his hands on his apron, and he must have seen the curiosity on my face. I asked him, half-jokingly, how something so simple could feel so alive. He smiled—a slow, patient smile, and he placed his hands on the table with a kind of reverence, as if the wood itself held memories.
“Pasta is a simple thing,” he said, almost to himself. “But simplicity, in the right hands, can carry the weight of generations. It’s not about what I add,” he said quietly, “but about understanding what’s already there. Every ingredient carries a story. I just listen.”
And there it was. This bowl of pasta wasn’t just flour, eggs, and oil. It was wheat that had been cultivated by countless hands across countless ages, olive oil pressed from trees that had stood for centuries, their roots winding into the hillside. The eggs were from chickens, themselves part of a lineage as ancient as the land. It wasn’t that ancient was better; it was that the chef knew this history, understood the reverence it deserved. He wasn’t just cooking; he was bearing witness to something much older, much larger than himself. His work, in that moment, was the next step in a journey that began long before he was born.
I left Florence, but that night stayed with me, trailing me back home, haunting me in the quiet, early hours as I sat at my piano, tracing the lines of melodies that seemed so pale and weightless by comparison. What would it mean, I wondered, to create music with that same kind of reverence? To strip down the artifice and discover what lay beneath, to find a way to make music that, like that pasta, could carry its own quiet power, even in the absence of embellishment?
My fingers rested on the keys, feeling the solid weight beneath them. What were the ingredients of music, really? Not the notes themselves but the forces that shaped them? I thought of time first, not as a sequence of beats, but as a kind of inheritance—a pulse that connected each note to every rhythm that had come before it. Time was to music what flour was to pasta; it held everything together. I pressed a key and let the note ring out, listening to the silence that followed, feeling how it filled the room. I’d always used music to fill space, to keep things moving. But now, I could hear the fullness of that space in the vibrations and the connection of space and time – the room and the time notes occupied the room. I was relearning to listen to time. My music typically has a “spaciousness” to it – I rarely write “busy” music. But re-engaging with time in such a holistic way was something I needed.
As I sunk into the vibrations of the sounds and the space, I rediscovered a depth to each note and the combinations of vibrations. This I call “Quality” of sound. This is the timbre, pitch, dynamics, and other qualities to a sound that communicates so directly. After studying Music Composition and Theory, I’d often chased layers, harmonies, articulations, thinking that being clever or erudite was the answer. But what if I added another meaning to my term “quality”? Just as the chef had chosen his ingredients not for their flash but for their depth, what if sound, too, had a kind of lineage, a resonance that went beyond pitch or tone? I played a single note and let it linger, hearing its timbre, its weight, the way it seemed to stretch beyond the physical key. I began to understand that each note due to they way it’s produced had a kind of spirit, a color that was clearer, fuller when left alone, when not muddied by unnecessary “over composing”. This is not to say I wanted to become an extreme minimalist, it’s more about understanding the vibrations as intimately and deeply as possible. Just like the chef knowing which farm raised the wheat and what variety and when it was harvested and how it was milled and wha the season was like and on and on to finally inform his use of the flour in his pasta.
Though I turned a new ear to Time and Quality, I realized I’d been missing a piece – Intention. The chef wasn’t simply feeding people; he was inviting them to pause, to taste something timeless. There was a purpose behind his simplicity, a mission woven into every dish he served. He wanted to educate people to pay attention to what they are eating. To pay attention to how what we eat not only affects our bodies, but also the world around us. Of course, music is more than sound (but at the same time it is not!). Music is an invitation to connect, to listen not just with the ears but with something deeper. I realized, in that moment, that my purpose wasn’t to impress or to dazzle but to offer something real, something that could reach people in a way that words never could.
But it was more than that. Music, like that bowl of pasta, needed a setting, a ritual, a respect for the space it inhabited. I thought of that trattoria, the flickering candlelight, the soft murmur of voices, how everything in that environment seemed to pull you into a slower rhythm. Just as that meal had been something to savor, music, too, needs its own sanctuary. Without that space, it becomes diluted, like Muzak in the background, filling a room without meaning, cheapening itself in the process.
When music is reduced to background noise, it’s like junk food—there to fill the silence, to clutter the mind. And like junk food, it leaves the spirit empty, unfulfilled. In that trattoria, I had tasted something that felt sacred, something that asked for reverence. Music deserves the same respect, a kind of ritual that invites the listener to pause, to be still, to let the sound fill them without rush or distraction. I was taken back to my high school and college days when I’d give music that space and time. I’d quiet the room and prepare to listen intently. I’d share the space with friends and experience something together. In particular I remember the first time my friend and I sat and listened to Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 and I was simply blown away. But it wasn’t just the music it was the tea we prepared before settling in. It was dimming the lights. It was adjusting the volume before pressing play so that everything came across perfectly. It was 30 minutes of being focused and awash in sound in a sacred setting.
In the days that followed my trip to Florence, I returned to my piano, letting each note settle, each phrase find its own breath. The music didn’t need to be stripped of its complexity; it needed to find its own shape, its own natural form, much like that bowl of pasta wasn’t simply thrown together but crafted, each ingredient honored. A complex piece could still feel simple, I realized, if it respected the core elements—rhythm, tone, and purpose. It wasn’t about reducing music to the fewest notes but about choosing the right ones, letting each sound emerge with a clarity and fullness that honored its place.
Now, when I compose, I feel that lineage under my hands—the heartbeat of time, the weight of sound, the quiet urgency of intention. My notes are simpler, yes, but they are not bare; they are full, rounded by the history and care that shapes them. I have come to trust in the depth of simplicity, whether it emerges as a single line or a layered composition, letting the music speak for itself, carrying the weight of generations, one note at a time.And so I play, listening for the ever-present vibrations beneath, trusting that each note, each pause, holds a story all its own—a story that, like that bowl of pasta, reaches back to something timeless, something beyond words, asking only that we listen.