Mort and Dot #4: "Trees"

A New EP In Ten Parts

Note: Mort and Dot is a new EP of ten piano pieces that will be released on May 1. They are based on the sheet music collection of my grandparents. In this series, you can listen to exclusive tracks and learn more about how the project was made.

Track #4: “Trees”

If you liked this, you can support my work by digitally preordering the entire EP here:

And here is the cover to the original sheet music:

Can we agree that the design is pretty fabulous? The colors, the leaves, the blue-green hills, and the more abstract trees in the distance all strike me as something beautiful. This lovely design combined with the patina of age, the creases and tears of use, and even Mort’s signature crawling up the left hand side reveal many layers of meaning.

And here is a photo collage from Mort’s 1924 high school yearbook:

Mort is the serious one, second from the right. He was the captain of the basketball team, and they used to play right in the middle of the town’s opera house, with its flat floors and high ceilings (this opera house, called the Tecumseh Theater, is currently being renovated, and will open up to the public again in June). I’ve shared this photo before, with a different project called Shawnee, Ohio. I wanted to share it again because there is something so compelling in it about the way Mort’s eyes are piercing through the image and are staring right at me, over a century later.

My mom used to say—and this was recently confirmed by my uncle—that Mort loved to play fast music at the piano. He would hop up and down on the piano bench, moving to the rhythms. Even though my music is much slower and introspective, I hope Mort would have enjoyed playing this new piece as well.

If you’d like to support my work, consider preordering the digital album over on Bandcamp (there’s also a PDF of the Mort and Dot score that comes with each purchase):

Happy listening, and more soon,

Brian