Redwood Reflections
Redwood Reflections and Other Selections brings together two sides of Matthew Cook’s original solo piano music.
The seven-piece Redwood Reflections Suite takes the listener on an imagined journey through the ancient redwood forests of Northern California. Some of the music began as independent compositions, written in other places and at other times, but years before the album was recorded the pieces came together as a suite inspired by the redwoods.
The album’s Other Selections draw from a wider collection of people, places and experiences from Matthew’s life.
A Journey Through the Redwoods
The Redwood Reflections Suite follows an imagined path through the ancient redwood forest—from morning fog and the stillness beneath the canopy to rushing water, open sky and the mountainside beyond.
Morning Fog
Morning fog cloaks the forest in a soft, shifting blanket of mist. The ancient redwoods reach high into the fog, their branches gathering moisture from the air. Droplets cling to needles and leaves before falling to the mossy ground below.
In the hush of the morning, the towering trees seem to draw life directly from the mist surrounding them.
Passage
Passage began around 1972 in Aberdeen, Washington, as a piano and vocal love song written for the woman who would soon become Matthew Cook’s first wife.
Years later, while living high on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, with a piano and an expansive view of the Pacific, the song evolved into a solo piano piece. Those years of intensive playing helped shape an approach to solo piano that would remain an enduring part of Matthew’s music.
When the piece became part of the Redwood Reflections Suite, it acquired another meaning: a passage through the ancient forest, following a path that winds among the towering trees.
Recorded in 1999 for Redwood Reflections, “Passage” has since reached listeners around the world.
Sanctuary
Deep within the redwood forest, an ancient grove becomes a sanctuary. Beneath the towering trees, the forest floor is carpeted with moss, ferns and redwood sorrel.
There is a profound stillness here. The sounds of the outside world seem to disappear, leaving only the quiet of the forest, occasionally punctuated by birdsong.
Sanctuary reflects that sense of entering a place set apart—a place of stillness beneath trees that have stood for centuries.
Can’t Keep My Mind On Business
The piece began as a piano and vocal song about being unable to concentrate on anything because thoughts of a lover kept getting in the way.
Within the Redwood Reflections Suite, that distraction took on a different form. Here it is the redwood forest that makes it difficult to keep one’s mind on ordinary concerns—the immense trees, shifting light and sheer scale of the landscape continually drawing attention away from everything else.
The original idea remains: sometimes something captures the imagination so completely that there is simply no keeping one’s mind on business.
Above the Canopy
Above the Canopy leaves the forest floor behind. The music imagines rising through the towering redwoods until the world opens above the trees.
From there, the ancient forest becomes a vast landscape—the canopy stretching into the distance beneath an open sky.
Waterfall
The path through the redwoods eventually reaches moving water. A stream tumbles over rocks and fallen trees, gathering speed as it descends through the forest.
Waterfall follows that motion—the falling, tumbling and rushing of water through the stillness of the redwoods.
Mountainside
Mountainside was written in the late 1970s while Matthew was living high on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, looking out over the blue Pacific. It came from a tumultuous period of his life, lived in an extraordinarily beautiful place.
Within Redwood Reflections, the music takes on another landscape. The journey through the ancient forest is ending, and the path begins its descent down the mountainside.
The forest gradually gives way to the world beyond the trees.
More Music at the Piano
Redwood Reflections is part of more than five decades of Matthew Cook’s original solo piano music.