Music by W. A. Mathieu
New Releases (2002–2006; more on the way!)
	The Ghost Opera (2006) — The Ghost Opera Company formed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where I taught improvisation from 1968 to 1974. We used an improvisatory technique, based on musical games I'd developed in Chicago with percussionist George Marsh, bassist Clyde Flowers, and woodwind master Rich Fudoli. I recorded our spontaneously woven ensemble music and then these recordings into two pieces, Odd/Even and The Narrow Pass. From the liner notes: “Each age has its characteristic feeling. The feelings of creative possibility and free association in the sixties and early seventies seemed especially bright. When I walked the streets of San Francisco, every passerby seemed like a kindred soul. The air was quickened; you could fly through it. The world would be forever changed. In this atmosphere, much free jazz and improvisatory chamber music had its nascence. Now, in 2006, more than 40 years after The Ghost Opera began, we have new technologies, new ears, and new aesthetics. I hope this music has a chance to speak again to folks who remember those times, and to speak in new ways to contemporary ears.” Ghost Opera is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Rumi & Strings (2005) — One reason Rumi's poems, especially Coleman Barks' renditions of them, are ripe for the art-song composer is that the metaphors are so visual and sensual. “Ten Quatrains and a Chickpea” and “Birdsong” comprise twenty-four songs for Devi Mathieu's rich, fully alive soprano voice, accompanied by Shira Kammen on violin and the composer at the piano. “Harmönika” was written for violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, who perform it brilliantly on this CD. Although the poetry of Rumi is not a specific source for Harmönika, the intertwining in Rumi of human and divine love is similar to the constant mixing of the programmatic and the absolute in music. Are the players singing to each other, or are the strings singing to the Beloved? Rumi & Strings is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Game / No Game (Mutable Music, 2004) — When George and I play together we tend to hear compositionally, that is, we try to weave coherent stories told through musical ideas. Surface texture, which is like the atmosphere of a story, does arise, of course, but strictly musical ideas drive the narrative from the inside. This means remembering (as best we can) what we've been playing. Consequently the pieces are short, typically three or four minutes. On the track list, we describe the pieces but left them untitled because no matter how hard we try to find names for them, for us they remain simply pieces that sound the way they sound. Game / No Game is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Second Nature (2004) — I like the idiom “second nature." The first nature is the soul; by second nature someone does something, like throwing a baseball or playing the piano, as if it were part of himself. I live in an exquisite valley I look at 365 days a year, and somehow the beauty of the valley turns into music. The wind in the tall grass makes green waves by nature; by second nature these become flowing chords. The growth patterns of tress become a musical composition. When I recorded this album in 1983, I'd already been experimenting with the cross-rhythms of African music, especially the Shona music of Zimbabwe, for about ten years. These rhythms and their attendant harmonies arose from the African earth and spoke through its people. When I first heard them I felt a great musical resonance, but inside that I sensed an even greater kinship. We're all exiles from an Africa we've never been to or seen, and playing these rhythms while watching the seasons change from the slopes of Barnett Valley was like discovering a homeland. Second Nature, a CD reissue of the 1983 audio cassete, is available from Cold Mountain Music
	The Best of the Sufi Choir: A Jubilee Selection (2004) — The Sufi Choir formed in 1969 among the followers of Samuel Lewis. A white-bearded, bespectacled, compact dynamo, Lewis had been ostracized many years previously from his wealthy San Francisco family and now, in his early seventies, was coming into his own as a teacher of hippies. The Sufi-based mysticism of Sam Lewis had both a tremendous range and a focused practicality. The words he used and the practices he gave rang the bell of recognition in our hearts, and helped us live our daily lives. We called him “Murshid,” a Persian word for teacher. During our gatherings, Murshid led singing practices, often inventive and contrapuntal. “Why not form a little choir?” I asked Murshid one day. “Sure,” said Murshid, “and you’re the maestro.” Typically among Sufis, when a teacher dies, the outward forms of the teaching tend to fragment while the essence is internalized and protected. Murshid Lewis died unexpectedly as the result of a fall, in January 1971. The vitality of the Sufi Choir was to a large extent a response to his death; its demonstrative, often ecstatic music was a transmission of Murshid’s clear-eyed universalism. Over the years, there have appeared numerous Sufi Choirs in many creative forms. The community expands, there are new practices, new circles, new histories — Shiva/Shakti, Shiva/Shakti. The Sufi Choir music presented here affirms that it’s okay to learn from history, to hearken to the dead and to crib what doesn’t die. What is timeless is thrown forward. We can listen back over the decades, take a deep breath and move on. Can’t stay here long. The Best of the Sufi Choir, an updated and repackaged of the 1994 CD release, is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Streaming Wisdom / In the Wind (2004) — When you watch flowing water, you see it is alive. Its moving waves, over millions of years, have evolved into the wavy motions of its creatures. Similarly, when birds are flying against the sky, the intelligence of the air becomes a visible kind of music — the flocks are like chords, and their flight patterns like atmospheric chord progressions. The cross-rhythms of African music evoke the streaming wisdom of these fluid elements in an extraordinary way. The Shona cross-rhythmic techniques that abound in this album were first shown to me by Paul Berliner, in person and through his book, Soul of the Mbira (University of California Press). West African kre-kre rhythms were shown to me by my life-partner in percussion, George Marsh. From the early 1970s I became entranced with their deep, secret metabolism, and began incorporating them into my music. The first two albums of such music were Streaming Wisdom and In the Wind, recorded from 1979 through 1982 on a TEAC 4-track 3440 in my small studio near Sebastopol, California. This was in the early days of home access to multi-track technology, and it was hugely satisfying to have the time — the months and years needed — to work out the performing and recording techniques. Now, twenty-five years later, it's equally satisfying to re-master and re-release the material combined as a single CD. Streaming Wisdom / In the Wind, a CD compilation of the 1979–1982 albums, is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Say I Am You — Four Song Cycles from the Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi (2003) — When I first read the volume of Rumi poems called Open Secret, translated by poet Coleman Barks, the lines lifted from the page as music itself, curling up as bright tropes and swirling phrases. I sensed these poems would set themselves, and, notwithstanding the detail that goes into any work, that’s what happened. I phoned Coleman Barks in Athens, Georgia, and announced, “You are my brother,” despite which we became long-time friends. In the meantime, I’ve set, with his blessing, dozens of his Rumi versions. Over and over again he shows me how language sings itself. The first song of Say I Am You describes friendship as “made of being awake,” and enjoins friends to “stay here, quivering with each moment like a drop of mercury.” The second seeks unity with the Friend. Image after image invokes the ultimate resonance of divine union: “I am the morning mist,/ and the breathing of evening… I am a tree with a trained parrot in the branches…Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.” In the Arc of Your Mallet, songs culled from Open Secret, was released in 1988 as a cassette, and is new to CD. The ten songs swing through a tremendous range of feeling. Ecstasy is tempered by longing, in turn giving way to despair; incredulity is trumped by clear revelation. The three songs of The Speechless Moon (from the 1988 volume These Branching Moments) are steeped in images so vivid that the tone painting of the music simply arises out of the language. Rumi sees beauty and meaning everywhere. The cameo songs of Eight Quatrains are a condensed version of the 1988 cassette. Say I Am You is available from Cold Mountain Music
	This Marriage (2002) — Rumi speaks of union with the divine — the Beloved — as a marriage. The title duet of this album offers images that remind us of such unions: honey dissolving in milk, women laughing together for days on end, the leaves and fruit of a date tree, a pale moon in a light blue sky. Musical duets can be like fine marriages in high art, replete with intimacy, ongoing trust, passionate joining, the cool trick of hearing the sound of another emanating from yourself, the being in another, but via the music. Athletes, actors, strangers, and all varieties of ensemble musicians know this; all compassionate and empathetic people know this — it’s a special form of the primordial connection. The special-ness of this album consists in friendships long and deep. The current of love running through these friendships is absolutely personal yet universal in the same moment. It can be playful as kids horsing around in the den, or being secretly dangerous together in the woods. Maybe I’d tousle my friend’s red hair, or dare my big sister to jump over a ditch; maybe forty years of passing in and out of each other’s lives opens out into this chord, this string’s down bow, the sudden rightness of this gong stroke, or a melted life of thankfulness in one of Devi’s long melismatic glides. This Marriage is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Three Compositions for Piano (2002) Gourd Music — Gourds have a fond place in my heart. When used for musical instruments, they provide a resonant space that amplifies the sound and reminds you of hollow growing things. Two instruments that rely on gourds to speak for them have changed my musical life: the tamboura of India and the mbira of Africa. A tamboura is a long-necked instrument with a large gourd resonator, strung with four strings and used for the ever-present drone of Indian music. Mbiras, which are played recessed within the cavity of a large gourd, are thought of by some westerners as a kind of hand-held piano—indeed we have named them “thumb pianos.” I sometimes think of my piano as a large mbira with the sound-box acting as a giant gourd: a grand mbiano. Shiva Weather — I’d thought to make a long dovetail multitrack piece quickly, so as to preserve an improvisational feel, and then doctor and clean up the tracks carefully until voila! I would have a spontaneous-sounding piece full of polyphonic and textural detail, which is an enduring compositional ideal of mine. The experience reminded me that when you’re making art, both creative and destructive forces appear unexpectedly and blend into one another like changes in the weather. The title is a bow to Shiva, god of what arises and of what falls away. A Wedding Sonata for Two Pianos — There is something about the aesthetic of typical piano duo literature that bothers me—too many notes, especially octaves, too awkward sounding, noisy, overwritten. For A Wedding Sonata, I tried to orchestrate the piano parts like a dialogue between true friends, where accommodation is always being made. As in the other pieces on this album, mbira-type cross-rhythms and modulating modality are prevalent in A Wedding Sonata. The form follows roughly the three-movement form of the classical Sonata Allegro, with interrelating, developing, and recapitulating themes in the first movement. The second movement is a song-like spinning out of orchestrated melody. The third movement is a rondo-like capricious dance. Three Compositions for Piano is available from Cold Mountain Music
	Narratives (2002) — The piano stands in a studio on a rise in a valley full of trees, creeks, and cows. Next to the keyboard are some recording machines with buttons and dials set just so. When I walk the stone path through the grass up to the studio I can, if I want, sit down, press a few buttons, glance at the valley trees and coastal hills, and record an improvised piece. I choose one of the twelve tonal centers — or one of them chooses me — and a story begins to unfold. The notes of the mode reveal themselves one by one, hiding then re-emerging as elements of landscape, character, and plot. I’ve begun to notice that the stories aren’t about me, or the valley, or the wife or kids, but about themselves. The pieces unscroll their lives to the player, narrate themselves, explain how it feels inside. They ask me to be patient. I try to follow the story, to nod and be sympathetic as if to a wanderer, “Yes, I see, I understand.” My ear follows the plot; my fingers follow my ear. If I can follow the narrative line through to the end, I save the recording. During a span of two years — from 1998 to 2000 — I saved about 65 of these stories that told themselves to me. Here are 19 of them, sequenced together to tell, I hope, an even larger story. Narratives is available from Cold Mountain Music
Multitrack Piano Compositions on Cassette (1981–1984) Most of the pieces on the following two cassette albums have been compiled into a single CD, Streaming Wisdom / In The Wind, released in 2004. Second Nature, Allaudin's third multitrack cassette album, now out of print, was also released as a CD in 2004.
	Streaming Wisdom (1981) — This music, Allaudin's first solo piano recording, celebrates the intelligence of streaming air and water. From the liner notes: "If only we could see the air it would look like music sounds. Sometimes when dark birds fly against the sky the air does become visible. Then flocks of birds are like chords, and their flight patterns bring out the harmonies of the atmosphere." Streaming Wisdom is available on audio cassette and LP, and much of the music from it is available on the newly released Streaming Wisdom / In the Wind Compilation CD. All are available from Cold Mountain Music
	In the Wind (1983) — These rhythmic acoustic piano pieces, often multi-tracked, originated as improvisations and evolved into compositions that sometimes sound like a small keyboard orchestra. In the Wind is available on audio cassette and LP, and much of the music from it is available on the newly released Streaming Wisdom / In the Wind Compilation CD. All are available from Cold Mountain Music
“New Age” Piano (1986–1991)
	Listening to Evening (1986) — This music recreates the long, powerful moment when male and female forces are balanced between sun and moon. It was originally released on the Sona Gaia label by Narada. Gorgeous piano sound. Listening to Evening is available on audio cassette from Cold Mountain Music .
	Available Light (1987) — Released by Windham Hill, this CD contains the hit "To the Well" with Bobby McFerrin. Available Light is available on audio cassette from Cold Mountain Music
	Lakes & Streams (1991) — Images of lakes and streams painted with the resonance of a grand piano -- moonlight on calm water, unseen currents in a deep lake, the light of early morning in a brook. Reviewed in Alternate Music Press Lakes & Streams is out of print and unavailable.
Jazz Arrangements (1959–1963)
	Standards In Silhouette: Stan Kenton (1959) — Remixed, remastered and reissued on CD1998. From new liner notes by Michael Sparke:".....at 21 years of age and still something of an idealist, Bill Mathieu entered the real world as staff arranger for the Kenton band. Mathieu's talent had enabled him to come up with the near-impossible, an original and especially beautiful slant on writing concert arrangements of popular ballads, that made them sound fresh and different. Mathieu's special skill lay in almost recomposing standard melodies with his own additional themes, an art aspired to by many writers, but rarely accomplished with the flair and ingenuity that Mathieu achieves." Standards in Silhouette is available on CD from Blue Note Records at Jazz Music Net.