Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette – This is a piece created at the urging of this album’s producer Brig Serman. We were nearing the end of this project and I asked him to choose a painting that he would like me to interpret. He chose one of Van Gogh’s most unique, Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette. Although painted in 1885, there’s something very modern, very cool and somehow relevant about this painting and for some reason I started with a melody line that had a kind of jazz sensibility about it, but I abandoned that and considered composing a scherzo because I felt like Van Gogh was having a bit of fun when he painted this. But even that didn’t feel completely right. Ultimately, I created three pieces, a kind of sonatina for this painting and left the decision as to how best to arrange them to Brig.