A misty Japanese landscape… haikus; concentrated, yet transparent, like calligraphy…
A structure of ebony and ivory, a spiraling slow-motion…

This is not to be hurried, not to be forced, but to let happen, let flow, let move in a natural direction, like the Lapland streams flowing down from the glaciers up above, between the snowy summits, always finding the natural way down to the meandering river in the valley.

I don’t say that these sparse keyboard locations (like birds settling on little rocks out in the sea) bring on exactly the same atmospheres as some of the pieces by Morton Feldman – but the analogy is self-evident: the notes that sort of just trickle slowly, one after the other, forming, not necessarily a melody, but… a row of notes… Yes, these pieces constitute – trigger – a certain feeling of restfulness, of the northern mountains, of the way your body feels after a long day's trek across rough terrain, through fords and up steep climbs; the way the body feels as you sit down, gulping the glacier water, mineral rich and tasty, and the warmth and tiredness flows through your anatomy.

I think the first Morton Feldman CD I got was “Piano” on Hat Art. Marianne Schroeder played the piano in pieces like “Piano” and “Palais de Mari”, and this CD “itz’at” reminds me a lot of that CD, and it brings on some of the highly pleasurable emotions and sensations I got from that first encounter with Feldman. That is a very high praise for Diaz-Infante’s solo piano playing, and rightfully so.

“The Pax Preludes I – XIII” could well become a classic set in the introspective music field. The tones from Ernesto Diaz-Infante’s piano are like rays of light reflecting from puddles of water on a gravel road through a forlorn Russian shanty-town a day of grayish fall in November; like glimpses of indestructible soul in a dreary human situation, even making me think of mystics like Meister Eckart or Thomas of Aquino – or maybe even of pre-Socrats like the Pindaros of emerging Greece, way back in a golden age of human dawn…

Concluding “Mariposa Liviana” is a little longer than the different pieces of “Pax Preludes”, but moves along in much the same venue.

It takes a lot of human experience, human maturity – and intuition – to compose, play… and listen to these pieces. They are true gems; water drops on spider webs in low sunlight through the woods.

I’ll say no more. I’ll just listen… listen…