I have always been fascinated by how jazz soloists weave their rhythms in and out of an underlying steady beat. These brief rhythmic escapades can be heard as early as the 1920s in the recordings of trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bubber Miley.

“Bugi Wugi” follows their model by creating rhythmic encounters and disencounters between the two hands. The left hand keeps time by playing a series of steady accompaniment patterns. As in boogie woogie piano playing, the right hand is rhythmically freer and more improvisatory-sounding, at times locking in with the left hand’s beat and at other times going off on its own.

This unfolding game of rhythmic consonance and dissonance requires the pianist to negotiate the right hand’s rapidly changing tempos with the left hand’s steady beat, all the while imbuing the melodies with expressive lyricism, the accompaniment with a solid sense of groove, and the overall piece with the illusion of effortless improvisation.

- Fernando Benadon