Kathleen Ryan

After I quit piano lessons in my teens, because I had already accomplished my life goal of playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, I started writing lovely angsty adolescent songs — with good music, of course!

Then I realized that I didn’t intend to sing in front of people. I just wanted to play piano.

BUT I still wanted to “sing” songs!

Which is how my first piano recording was subtitled: Piano Songs.

Only, the world read that subtitle and thought I was going to be singing on the album. Oops.

I had in mind Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. Alas! no one else had that in mind!

Still, when I improvise & compose my piano pieces, I still believe that I am creating a song to sing at the piano. Which means that many of my pieces end up in song form. Verses and choruses and even the occasional bridge.

Only, I have no words for these songs, so to differentiate the verses, I create different music. Which in classical structure ends up being a backward rondo: A-B-C-B-D-B — the chorus returns, but the A section does not.