Inhalt: This album was conceived when I was 18 years old, at an important turning point in my life. Back then, as a sophomore at Yale College and at somewhat of a crossroads, I took my first class in architecture and fell deeply in love with it. After years of performing and mastering the art of the keyboard, beginning something new from scratch felt unsettling. But it was a process that, though frightening, felt right. My first mentor in architecture was Professor Kent Bloomer, generally considered one of the greatest living American sculptors and designers. After hearing about my career in music, he generously took me under his wing to begin a long-standing conversation about ornamentation in architecture and in music. Discussions of how rhythm, melody, and harmony translate to built structures naturally brought together one chapter of my life with the next in a way that felt almost cyclical. Out of this emerged a wellspring of inspiration and important new perspectives the results of which are reflected in this recording. The two pieces on this album, both part of larger circular anthologies, convey the cyclical notion of end and of beginning: reincarnation. While SchubertsSonata in B-flatrepresents a bittersweet and painful negotiation with death in a moment where his life is fading, MessiaensPremière communion de la Viergecelebrates the overwhelming joy of new life and birth. The two works are connected by the B-flat major chord, which both triumphantly marks the end of Schuberts sonata and opens Messiaens piece, this time notated with a piano dynamic and markedintérieur. Schuberts constant wavering between the narrative of the past and dreams of a new life evoked through his rapid and oscillating tonal changes arguably conveys the struggle of detaching from the human world without a sense of resolution. Yet the finale, composed before the first movement, seems to end with a confident acceptance and embrace of death, a vigour that parallels the outbursts of joy in Messiaens work. Although fundamentally a st