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March 6th, 2008 | 7:30 pm Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall The CUNY Graduate Center 365 5th Avenue, NYC Deviation I and Improvisation on a Random Tetrachord | John Wykoff John Wykoff, piano Three Deviations (2001) takes the crayon and construction paper to some well known (and well played) works by the masters. There are no secret messages, no hidden systems - just a little indulgent fun. The idea comes from Satie's Sonatine Bureaucratique, in which he turns a Clementi sonatina inside-out. John Wykoff is a composition student at the Graduate Center. His direct ancestor is Peter Clausen Wyckoff, whose original Dutch farmhouse is now a museum in Brooklyn, but into which John must pay admission anyway. Near the farmhouse is an old Dutch Reformed Church, the pulpit of which, according to an inscription, is planted directly above John's decaying ancestor. In the church's small cemetery can be found the worn gravestones of several centuries of decaying dutch descendents, including about half a dozen John Wykoff's. John feels a certain confining omen in the fact, and often wonders if anything can be done to prevent him from spending his decaying centuries there - but the feeling rarely comes out in his music. return to PAST CONCERTS