Marguerite Gachet in the Garden – I started working on The Van Gogh Sessions early in 2019 and originally had a different piece of music worked up for this painting. But in the summer of that year, I was able to view the actual painting at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This changed my entire approach to the composition. I’m not sure why but when you see these amazing works up close and take in the detail, the craft, the colors, it can’t help but affect you – and it did me. The original piece was more pastoral, but I think it lacked any reference to Miss Gachet herself who is at the center of the painting waist-deep in flowers. She is nearly in profile and her right hand is obscured by foliage. To me, she is coyly modeling for the admiring Van Gogh, but this is an unrequited union so, I used space and silence to represent this distance and the D minor, E minor to F major passage to add tension, longing.